


The Fallen

by Pohadka



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: CSI levels of gore, Compliant up to Black Panther, Infinity/Endgame non compliant, M/M, Nebulous Relationship, Ronin - Freeform, Slow Burn, agent bucky barnes, friends with benefits while healing, very much Ronin level of bloodshed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2020-07-30 21:38:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20104006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pohadka/pseuds/Pohadka
Summary: Post Civil War, the Accords have been ironed out. Shield is rebuilding.  The Avengers are broken up.  Thor is offworld.  Bruce Banner is lost, and now Tony Stark is lost looking for Banner.  Natasha Romanoff, Steve Rogers, Vision, James Rhodes, and Sam Wilson are leading the search for Stark, and consequently, Banner.  That leaves the disappearance of one Clint Barton up to the newly reinstated Agent of SHIELD, Bucky Barnes.Thing of it is, no one’s sure if Clint wants to be found.  And Bucky has a lot of unresolved questions from the time they spent together in Wakanda.  Maybe he’s looking for those answers more than anything.Written for the Winterhawk Big Bang.  Art by Dalnimmoonlight.ETA: HOW could I forget to credit Floryanna for the beta work she does so wonderfully?  Two demerits for me!Edit 2:  This is now labeled as slow to update.





	1. Chapter 1

Shield HQ was still in the process of being rebuilt, but that didn’t stop the steady stream of people going in and out of various doors. “You sure you don’t want me to go in with you?” Steve asked softly. 

Bucky turned and socked him on the bicep, shaking his head. “Yes, dad. I can find my way on my first day of work. Thanks for driving me though.” 

“Wouldn’t miss it.” The asshole hadn’t even flinched at the punch or moved, but his eyes were in that wet wobbly stage. His hands were steady on the steering wheel, but the knuckles were getting a little white. Bucky would text Natasha or Sam for the need to run distraction. “Seriously. Can’t believe you even get to do it, but, here we are.” 

“Yup. And I gotta be going. See you for dinner?” Bucky stepped out of the car and straightened his slacks out before grabbing his backpack. 

Steve rolled the window down as Bucky shut the door. “I’ll try. I’ll need your help in making Sam shut up about first days of school or whatever that means.” 

“Oh no, we shouldn’t gang up on Sam,” Bucky answered in a droll flat voice. “That would be bad.” Steve laughed and Bucky gave a little wave with his metal hand before turning back to the building. Into the unknown again. But this time, even if he wasn’t in the building too, Steve was backing his play. And so were Natasha and Sam and, surprisingly, Wanda. With four Avengers signing letters of recommendation, he’d had the best job prospects in his life.

Of his free life, anyways. Bucky carefully pushed those old thoughts away as he headed inside. 

The main foyer was open, with waterfalls tastefully placed between wide granite plinths. Before he reached that though, there was a security checkpoint to get through. 

“Please place your left hand on the reader,” a bored guard said without looking up from his Starkpad. Bucky smiled softly and complied, watching the guard frown and look up when it beeped in rejection. 

Bucky waved his metal fingers and smiled, swallowing a laugh as the guard jumped to his feet. There was an empty holster on his hip, but he still slapped his hand to it. 

“Take it easy Edwards, I got him.” A short Asian woman stepped up to key an authorization code into the back of the reader and the gate slid open. “Hi, I’m Agent Melinda May. Coulson asked me to come down and escort you.” She glanced to the side where Edwards was slinking back to his seat. “He wanted me to help you navigate security. Welcome back, Agent Barnes.”

At her introduction, his brain immediately downloaded everything it knew about Agent May and shoved it right up against the back of his eyeballs. Without the constant wipes and a little help from his Wakandan friends, he now had access to everything he’d seen or done since he picked up with a snot-nosed punk in the alley behind O’Mallory’s bar in 1924. He was learning to keep it from being overwhelming, but it still made his step lurch a bit as he moved through the security zone. He could maybe blame that on the odd phrase. Welcome back? It was the first time he’d ever been here, that he knew of. 

“Agent May, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I’m hoping maybe I could watch you spar in person, some time?” Bucky gave her a respectful half bow he’d adopted in place of shaking hands. Touch was still iffy sometimes. 

To her credit, she barely shifted. She was a security officer and Coulson said he’d be working with her directly, so Bucky knew she knew his files back and forth as much as he did. “In person? You’ve seen video, I guess?” 

“In a manner of speaking.” They’d moved away from security, walking through the foyer to the elevator banks in the back. “They taught me your style, Before.” Before Hydra had been forced to give him up. Before Insight Day and Shield had come crashing down. Before, always capitalized in some odd way. 

“That explains a few files I came across in the Widow’s data dump.” Agent May slapped a button, then palmed another security panel. “We’ll get you into the system today, don’t worry. I’m glad you decided to accept Director Hill’s offer to work with us.” 

“I think everyone’s happier I accepted it,” Bucky said as blandly as he could. May gave him a fractionally softer look as they stepped into the elevator. He shifted his backpack a little and returned it. After the Accords had been signed, Wakanda had sent their lawyers to negotiate with the US government on his behalf. They’d had a surprising partner in their efforts. Pepper Potts had put the full might of Stark Industry’s legal department 100% behind him. They’d also worked for everyone who had sided with Steve. Almost everyone had accepted. All but one. 

“Don’t let that color your thinking, Agent. A lot of people here will understand your decision better than you think. Besides, you’re one of us now.” The elevator opened up on a corridor with glassed-in offices and a receptionist desk in the center of it all. “We’re glad to have you back.” 

Bucky decided she meant to have him back on the right side of the fight. “Thank you. I’m looking forward to working with you.” 

“Oh, I still run the occasional fire team. You’ll come along on a few, observation only, until you get your feet under you.” Agent May led him down the hall past the receptionists to a door marked Level 9 only. 

Bucky glanced back at the receptionist. She was monitoring a dozen screens and sat up ramrod straight. Her hands moved with quick efficiency, and from the set of her shoulders, he knew she was issued a sidearm like everyone else. Good to know. 

The doors creaked open and another slim woman sauntered out. Just in the six steps it took to join them, he could tell that May had trained her. They had the same walk, the same set to their shoulders. This woman was young enough to be May’s daughter, but there was no mention of children in her file. 

“Hey, May. This must be Agent Barnes. Welcome back.” She didn’t reach out to shake his hand, to his relief. “AC and Hill are all set up for you.” 

“Thanks. Agent Barnes, this is Agent Daisy Johnson. She’s usually my pain in the ass to work with.” 

“Ya got it, boss. Great to meet you, big guy. Can’t wait to see you twist everyone’s expectations.” She gave a small wave that he returned, then turned to go down the way they’d just come. The data file in his head was small, thankfully, but he could see she had a story and a half to tell. 

Behind the doors, the sounds and smells of the office space immediately cut off. Now it was labs and offices. May was giving a short tour, pointing out different places. In one lab, a woman and man waved at her through the glass, earning a nod from the agent. “That’s Fitz and Simmons. They’re not the heads of the scientific division, but only because they need more breathing room until they’re ready.” 

This time Bucky did flinch at the download. He looked back with a frown at the woman, then at Agent May. “You vouch for them?” 

She was watching him calmly, then nodded. “If you’re thinking that Dr. Simmons is Hydra, she’s not. She worked undercover after the fall for a while. That’s part of why she needs the breathing room.” 

Bucky took a deep breath then nodded, stepping aside to let her continue. 

The tour ended at the Director’s office. Next to it was the Deputy Director’s office, but the door was open and the lights out. “That’s Coulson’s lair, but he’ll be with Director Hill now.” May gave three quick raps on the door before opening it. 

Bucky took a deep breath and stepped into the office behind her. 

\--

The meeting progressed quickly. No one really stood on social niceties nowadays. They knew what he was here to do. He knew what they wanted from him. 

“When we spoke last week,” Agent Hill was saying, “you said there was still active Hydra in our ranks. We’ve been combing through our records and have set aside the ones that we think are likely. You’ll have full access to everyone’s service files, of course, and only report to Agent May, AD Coulson, and myself. We’ve put together a compensation package and oh, yeah.” She held out her hand to Coulson, who deposited a small folder into it. “We decided it was probably easier for you to break up your back pay into several untraceable forms of payment. And a check, for posterity.” 

“Back pay?” Bucky squeaked out, gawking as he opened the folder. 

“We negotiated with the US Army. Your official retirement records are in there, and severance pay. They always pony up for prisoners of war and account for probable rank promotions. You were enlisted so they bumped you up as high as they could. Congratulations Sergeant Major Barnes. The Army was ah, happy to let us be their courier.” 

Bucky relaxed enough to chuckle, looking the paperwork over. Okoye’s cousin had been very clear when it came to employment benefits. “This is probably more than I really deserve.”

“No, you deserve it. Shield is very consistent when it comes to back pay. We have more missing in action agents than most,” Coulson said softly. 

“Considering there are four people in this room and all four of us have been declared dead for one reason or another, we don’t take death as a reason to cut you from the roster,” Hill said with a sour twist. But her eyes were soft and open as she looked at him. Natasha admired this woman. It took a lot to earn respect from her, so Bucky was willing to go with it.

“Cool. I’ll keep that in mind as I go through the files.” He tried to keep his face as bland as he could while the other three traded significant glances. “Even I have a failed kill ratio,” he said as gently as he could, with a shrug of his shoulder. 

Coulson nodded, Hill’s face went as still as marble, and May just smiled. “In other less gruesome topics, we have a secondary assignment for you too.” 

“We need you to locate Clint Barton,” Hill said flatly. “He knows us too well, can out-think us. You might have better luck.” 

This time his brain didn’t flood him with data, because he already knew it all. “I know him, just from, you know. The thing with Cap and Wakanda.” He waved his hand in the air at those words. “Wouldn’t this be an Avengers internal thing?” 

“That’s the problem. Natasha flat out refuses to go after him. Banner’s missing. Thor’s off world. And now Stark’s gone missing. The Avengers we have left are spread thin and spending their time looking for those two.” 

The conversations Steve had with Sam and Natasha when they thought he couldn’t hear. He’d thought those had been about him. Bucky laughed softly at himself, but then looked up at the other three people actually in the room. “Sorry, you just explained a Steve thing to me. Thanks for that. Why do you need Barton to come in?” 

Coulson rubbed at his face. Hill kept her marble face going though. It was May who answered. “We think he’s gone rogue. We need to make sure he’s okay. His skill set, his knowledge base, and his history make for a very explosive situation.”

“Barton can either be the best in the world, present company excluded, or he can be the biggest disaster in the world,” Coulson chimed in. “I was his team lead, before the Avengers became a thing. Since the Accords, we haven’t heard a peep out of him. Barton going silent was never a good thing. I don’t see why it would change now.” 

“And if he’s gone, his family deserves to know.” Hill shifted to hand him another folder. Bucky found a short summary and another set of clearance credentials. “If he’s taken back up with that brother of his, we also want to know. You have full read in on all his files and mission reports.” 

“Barton means this much to Shield?” He asked, keeping his eyes down on the photo. It was a different person than the one he knew. It was in the eyes. Just like Steve had described himself back in Wakanda. The lips were the same though. He’d watched those lips for days. Bucky hid a shiver, pushing away the memory of the feel of those lips. 

“Barton means this much to us. And to the Avengers. Steve requested you on this case,” Coulson said. His stare was direct. He was also different from the person Steve had described to him. 

“And Natasha?” Bucky asked lightly. Barton had described luring the famed Widow into the fold to him those hazy days of recovery. Since then, Bucky had recovered the Soldat’s memories of the fierce little Widow in training. 

“She’ll tell you herself. She’s here, for your first interview,” May told him. 

—

Bucky had expected a desk in a corner somewhere, but instead, he’d gotten a whole office to himself. It was just off May’s desk in operations, but it had glass that could be darkened at a word, and it was keyed in to just his voice. May had also given him the schematics of the building to look over. The solid wall at his back was part of the structural reinforcement of the building surrounding the weapons storage. If anything was coming at his back, it had to really work to get there. He appreciated that. 

The office was six feet by four, with just his desk, a shelf unit to the side, and a weapons rack on the far side away from the door. It was empty, and Bucky thought maybe it would stay that way for a while. He’d spent a whole year in Bucharest without a weapon, and then a year in Wakanda after losing his arm, and it’d been freeing in a way he had never expected it to be. 

There was a Shield issued laptop on the desk, but he pushed it aside to pull his own out of the backpack. He kept a string of Kimoyo beads with it, privately as he’d promised. One blinked with a waiting message, so he ordered the door locked and the glass dark to listen to it. 

“Hey, white boy!” Shuri’s hologram said. “I don’t know what it’s like to have a real job, but Pietro says good luck and don’t die. Also, do not break that arm! I don’t have time to make upgrades for you right now! Call me later!” Bucky grinned as the hologram disappeared. It was good to know that Pietro was still hanging out with Shuri. Even if she did complain about all the white boys messing up her lab. 

Bucky picked up the bracelet again, turning on the recorder to do a slow pan of his office. No bugs, just the standard surveillance package. He pressed another button and even those shorted out. He sent the information to Shuri, if only for her notes on the effectiveness of her spyware gear. It was Okoye who said he’d need that, and he made it a point to never argue with that woman. 

The beads went back into his pocket, hidden away as he’d promised. Then Bucky got to work reading through the files. The packet about the back pay made him cough and choke a bit, but it did make him feel better about having to live on Steve’s charity. He quickly separated the information between his pockets and the backpack. Despite what Sam called it, it was NOT a go bag. That was under the trellis next to the house. Plus a few that he’d stashed at other locations. And some of this would go into them. 

It’s not that he didn’t trust anyone. Shit hit the fan an awful lot, that’s all. He preferred to have contingencies, regardless of what people thought about them. 

He was elbow deep in the Barton file when May knocked on the locked door. Bucky gave the command to unlock as he closed the file. 

She leaned against the door jam, arms crossed as she smiled at him. “You know, none of the surveillance was on, right? And was programmed to work with all the other gear in here.” 

“Yeah. Dead gear can’t be hijacked though,” he replied. 

May’s smile melted into something genuine. “I agree. Not gonna argue with you on it.” She straightened up and uncrossed her arms to wave at him. “C’mon. I’ve got someone set up to give you the full tour around here.” 

“Will I still be in one piece after it?” he asked, even as he shut down both laptops and locked them into his desk along with the folders. 

“Probably.” May turned as someone else came into the office. A second later, Natalia was sticking her head in through the door. 

“Nice digs. Sam had Steve going that you’d be under six layers of surveillance,” she said, one of her more open grins plastered over her face. 

Bucky shook his head while May laughed and took her leave. Once she was out of range, Bucky shook his Kimoyo beads at Natalia. “That’s the one thing that won’t be a problem.”

“I think I’m jealous. C’mon, I’m supposta give you a tour as I know the place and let you interview me.” She actually dimpled at him. “Volunteered to be the first in your Hydra purge interviews.” She waved again and headed out of the SecOp offices. 

Bucky snorted, but he followed her. “Short interview.” 

“Why do you think I wanted to go first?” She was dressed in jeans and a black Shield long sleeved shirt. Black boots clunked ahead of his silent shoes. “I like the haircut, by the way. Steve told me you’d done it.” 

He rubbed the back of his bare neck subconsciously. It wasn’t as short as it had been back in the 40’s, but neither was it the long tangled mess drooping in his face. “My ma always told me to make a good impression on your first day at work.” 

“Your ma was smart,” Natalia shot back, calling an elevator. 

“She also told me to stop hanging around that Rogers kid, nothing but trouble.” He leaned against the wall, smiling when she laughed.

“She was absolutely right about that.” Natalia stepped into the elevator first, her back to him even as a group of agents walked past, staring at them both. 

Bucky waited until the door shut before asking. “Was that for, you or me? Or both?” 

“The agents? Mm. Probably both. C’mon, I’m gonna give you the old Strike Team Delta tour.” The first button she jabbed was the basement.

—

The tour she led him on probably had nothing to do with an actual orientation and everything to do with how their brains were wired. Weapons storage, R&D (twice, on two levels), bolt holes (both official and ones she’d adapt for personal use), the back entrance into the data storage, a couple of the service access hatches and the ways around the construction to get to a perch on the roof that made him happy to snuggle into. 

Natasha poked at a couple of power transformers, then chortled when one popped open to reveal a battered case. Inside was a few boxes of chocolate cookies and a half empty bottle of vodka. “Here’s the old Barton for you. The pre-Loki Barton, anyways.” She took a sip of the vodka then handed it to him. 

Bucky took it, knocking back a slug the way he was taught, then wiped his lips. “He had good taste.” 

Natasha was poking around in the detritus in the bottom of the case, finding arrowheads, broken fletching, and the occasional poker chip. “That’s debatable. He stole that bottle from me.” 

Bucky chuckled softly. Then he switched gears. “Just for the record. Are you a Hydra agent?” 

Natasha held up a bullet case to the light, inspecting it. “Are you in love with Steve?” 

“Not sure that answer will wash in court, but I’ll take it.” Bucky handed the bottle back to her, smiling softly. “Tell me about Barton.” 

Natasha froze with her hand around the neck of the bottle, then she smoothly reanimated herself to sit beside him. “They put you on his case.” 

“They did. I was reading his official file when you came in.” Bucky stayed quiet while she gathered her thoughts. 

“You remember me as a widow in training, in the Red Room. Barton found me after most of the other Widows evolved or were, ah, deactivated.” 

Bucky closed his eyes as that memory swept through his brain. It didn’t do anything to block it, but he didn’t have to see her pity. 

“Barton has a protective streak a mile wide. When he realized I was just a kid, I guess he jumped from kill to keep just automatically.” Bucky opened his eyes as she took another sip. “Talked Fury into keeping me, had Coulson prove that I could cut it. Without Clint, I’d have never made it.” 

“Why aren’t you the one looking for him then?” 

Natalia stared at him. He’d gotten better at seeing her personality shifts. He also knew that she let him see them. “He said goodbye. He doesn’t want me to find him. So I can’t.” 

“How’d he say goodbye?” Bucky asked softly. 

“Week after you and Steve left Wakanda to deal with the lawyers and everything, Clint called me. Nothing out of the ordinary, just talking through shit. Then he told me he was gonna ship some stuff back and could I put it in storage. When the box arrived, it was all his bows, his quivers, his trick arrows.” She paused, then drained the last of the bottle before going on. “Even the arrow he was holding onto for his brother. Wherever he is, whatever he’s doing, it’s not Hawkeye out there doing it.” 

—

Bucky took the bow case back to his office, then saw Natasha out. She slowed down as they walked through the granite plinths on the main floor. Now that they were going slow, he realized they were covered with names. “Hey Natasha, can you answer something for me?” 

She paused from reading one of the plinths to look up at you. “Depends, but I’ll try?” 

Bucky rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Why do they keep saying ‘welcome back’ to me here?” 

The bright smile was unexpected. So was the warm hand in his as she led him down the row of plinths. He realized that none of the names had dates with them. She stopped at the first one and pointed up at it. 

It had familiar names. Dugan, Jones, even Farnsworth in the middle, then towards the end. A lot of unfamiliar names too, but the first one was…

The first one was James Barnes. The second one was Steven Rogers. 

Natalia let him read through the plinth then go back to those two names again. “This is how Shield remembers their dead. If your name is on one of these rocks, then you’re on the roster. You’ve been counted as an agent since the day Phillips, Carter, and Stark incorporated the agency.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First chapter going up. More going up once I get home. I’m on vacation! But I’m thinking of this fic all the time. There is ART! But I’m on my little iPad still teaching it the tricks of the trade.


	2. Chapter 2

Bucky interviewed the rest of his management team afterward. Hill, he asked to show him where the best coffee is and called it done. It was more a test to see how she reacted to him alone, and if she would order him around. She didn’t, except to never call her Maria, and never, ever bring her Starbucks crap.

Coulson got to explain the dead-not dead- running shadow Shield until the rebuild. This Bucky opted to do in Coulson’s office. Again to test how the relationship would be. He had decided that if either of them decided he was a tool to use instead of a person to work with, he’d tell Steve why he quit, then pull a Barton. 

Bucky ended up signing a trading card when he was done. That’s when he finally got to see the fanboy that Steve had told him about.

Melinda May, he chose to interview in the middle of the SecOps floor. 

One, he already knew what to expect from May. She’d given him enough body language to go on. And her records spoke for her, except that blank time where she wanted to be a paper pusher and never go out into the field again. He didn’t need that explained. 

He sat across from her at an empty desk, arms crossed in front of him. May mimicked his stance and raised an eyebrow. Bucky answered that with his own, and a small quirk of his upper lip. 

The rest of the conversation was just as silent. People milled around them, not-watching as avidly as they could. A couple people dropped all pretense and stared. One, the Daisy Johnson they’d passed earlier that day, pulled out a stop watch. 

“What are they doing?” someone asked. May’s eyelids drooped in an effort not to roll her eyes. 

“Dude, that’s Agent May being interviewed by the Winter Soldier,” someone answered. “Who knows what kind of mind games are going on.” Now Bucky’s turn to blink slowly. He made note of the voice. 

Someone else shushed them and the room fell silent. May’s bottom lip twitched, and an aura of pleasure at her team’s solidarity fell over her expression. 

Bucky blinked back, then quirked his eyebrow again. May answered with a cock of her head. 

Bucky laughed and gave her a little bow. “Thank you Agent May. It will be a pleasure working with you.”

“I’m certainly looking forward to it.” May stood up when he did, then turned to face the office. “And get back to work!” 

Bucky laughed and headed back to his office to pull up the roster for SecOps. He had what he needed. 

—

When he was growing up, it always felt like he never had enough time to read. Catching odd jobs when he could didn’t mean he could spend hours lost in a Jules Verne novel just because it fascinated him. 

Which is why he spent all the time he could away from Shield with a book in his hand, despite the fact that he read so much at work as well. The day that Sam had introduced him to the Kindle app on his own phone was the day he knew he was forgiven for everything pre-Wakanda. 

(He still spent part of his back pay on a new car. Because yeah.) 

When he could, he curled up in what he called his reading nook. Several of Steve’s team had gone in together on a three apartment building. Together, yet separate. Sam and Wanda had argued about the top floor, while Bucky had just tuned it out. They’d compromised. Wanda had the top apartment, but Sam had the right to manage the roof. There was no yard to share, so the roof had been converted into a gardening slash communal area. Bucky had stuck some comfortable chairs under Sam’s favorite Elephant Ear plants. Sam had babied them into luxurious growth to shield them from people spying on them. Bucky found himself there almost nightly in good weather, with his tablet. 

“Whatchya reading now?” a voice asked from the stairs below, just off to Bucky’s left. 

Bucky saved his place with a book mark before turning the tablet off. He’d left his metal arm downstairs to give his shoulder and back a break, so he wanted his hand free. “Ancillary Justice. One of the nerds at work said I might like it, or I might hate it.” 

Steve stepped into view, holding out a beer bottle to him. Bucky took it and waved him forward to sit down. 

“Which is it? Like or hate?” Steve asked, grinning as he took the chair close to him for the shade. 

“I think I like it. It takes some getting used to. The only pronoun anyone uses is she.” Bucky thought for a second, then shrugged. “No different than our old stories, when everyone was a man. Now everyone’s a woman in this.” 

“I might read it after you’re done, then.” Steve took a long sip from his own bottle, staring out at the river. It was barely in view, but you could catch a glimpse now and then between buildings. 

“Messy op?” Bucky asked softly. He hadn’t expected them to be back yet. 

“Very messy. I think your Shield friends are gonna have to work it though. Call us back in when they have a concrete lead.” Now Steve was focusing in on him. “How’s the job going?” 

“Good, I think. Everyone is either relaxing around me, or faking it pretty good.” They shared a soft smile, and Bucky shrugged with his good shoulder. “Three whole days and no one’s yelled to kick me out.” 

“I’m guessing they probably learned from the Barton phase after Loki. There was a lot of adjustments there. Now they know what to do, maybe?” Steve offered up. 

“They’re worried about him, you know,” Bucky answered. 

“We are too. I wish... I wish I knew him better so we could go find him. He’s every bit as good as Natasha about covering his back.” 

“Tell me about him?” Bucky asked softly, staring at his friend. 

Steve snorted, then pointed off in the distance with his bottle. “You should go talk to Romanoff then, if you wanna know about Barton.” 

“I did,” Bucky said. “They, ah, put me on his disappearance case, in case I have anything to add. Insight, or whatever they think us assassins know.” The last words twisted bitterly out of his mouth. 

“Buck, I’m sure that’s not it.” Now Steve was ducking a bit and flushing. That had never changed. Boy never could tell a lie. “I uh, may have mentioned to Coulson that you had an eerie talent of finding me any time you had a need to. New York, forests of Europe, with your fist in DC.” Now he was giving Bucky a rueful smile. 

“So you think I could find Barton too.” Bucky rolled his bottle around, thinking about that. 

“Maybe, yeah. You spent time with him in Wakanda, so you got to know him a little. All that time with Shuri after cryo. Man, that kid is something else, huh?” 

Bucky chuckled and nodded, thinking back to those hazy memories. Clint had known better than Steve when he needed space and when he needed support. And when he needed to be touched. Bucky had just accepted it because he had needed to, but now he was thinking there was more to that than he remembered. “Tell me what you know about Barton.” 

“He’s complicated. He’s every bit as smart and tricky as Natasha or Tony. He’s supernatural with that bow, or any projectile really. Real easy to talk to. You could shoot the shit with him for hours but not really get any personal information out of him unless he wanted you to know. But when he decided to do something, it got done. He uh,” Steve paused, then laughed. “I overheard Fury once, bitching how Clint and I were a lot alike about not asking permission to get something done.”

“Bet that made both of you popular.” 

“Clint was, I think. Before the whole New York thing.” 

“The New York thing, that was the Loki thing I also read about?” Bucky asked. “Barton never really said anything. Just seemed to know what he needed to say.” 

“Yeah. Loki was Thor’s brother. Played nasty mind tricks. Had control of Clint and a few others with that scepter he carried. Only had him for three days, but,” Steve sighed and shrugged. “It was enough to bring Shield to their knees. Clint is very good at what he does.” 

“Just imagine if I hadn’t been just a brute weapon.” Bucky laughed lightly, then finished off his bottle. “What did you think of him as a person?” 

Steve shuddered for a second, then laughed. “I’m kinda glad they didn’t. That they couldn’t.” Steve looked down, picking at the label on his bottle. “Clint was like the rest of us. Broken, very lonely, but unlike me and Tony, he accepted that he was broken. Accepted it and worked with it. I learned a lot about coping from him. He didn’t push through his problems, just adapted to still being competent even though everything. I’ve seen him take down battalions with broken legs and talk his way out of Coulson busting his balls about it.” 

Bucky laughed softly, nodding. “That’s the mental image I’m getting too.” He started to ask something else when his phone beeped. He slid it out of his shirt pocket to check the message from May. “Welp, I got my first field call. Gotta go get ready for my ride in 15.” 

Steve nodded, his smile going slightly brittle. “Be careful out there.” 

Bucky snorted as he grabbed his tablet to slide into his other pocket. “I’m field observing. What could happen?” 

—

Bucky followed the agent who picked him up through the layers of security surrounding the crime scene. And that was what it was, a crime scene. One with a high body count. “May wanted you here to observe, but if you think of anything, just say it,” Mack said. The man was huge, almost as tall as Thor, but he walked lightly on his toes. Someone who was used to using their body however it was needed. 

“Not sure what I can add, except maybe help count bullets or something,” Bucky replied. The entrance was pretty clear, but there had been two bodies being bagged on their way in. 

“You think differently than us. That’s why May asked for you.” They rounded the last corner, and the soft murmur of conversation that Bucky had been hearing opened up. 

The room was a little different, but his knees still locked as he took it in. The last time he had been there, it had been a satellite field resupply for Hydra. Now it looked like someone had made it a full base to work out of, before they were murdered. The very small voice deep inside him pronounced itself satisfied with the bloodshed. 

When he finally broke free of the memory, May stood on one side, Mack on the other. Guarding him? Or the others if he regressed? Either way, he was glad of the company. “Sorry, I was here once. Before Insight Day.” 

Mack was the one who asked. “Do you remember much about it?” 

Bucky whispered, “I remember all of it.” He took a deep breath to steady himself, lifting his chin. “It just hits me all at once when it’s relevant, makes me freeze up.” He finally unlocked his legs, walking over to the blank wall to nudge a body to the side to reveal a panel. He keyed in the code, Zola’s code, the one that never could be overwritten. The wall hummed for a second, then pulled open to reveal a mostly empty chamber. Only mostly empty. 

The idiot in the lab coat actually pointed a gun at him. “Stay back! I know the codes! I’ll use them!” he spat out, shaking the gun at the people behind him. “I will!”

Bucky just smiled. “I know the codes too. Guess what, they’re useless.” He reached forward with his metal hand to crunch the gun. “You saw what happened?” 

The guy crumpled into the chair. No, it was a reconstruction of the Chair. It amused Bucky to see him there, even as the hair on the back of his neck rose. “I thought it was you. So I hid in here. I thought it was you.” 

Bucky shook his head and waved Mack up to take the tech into custody. His attention was turned to the monitors. He found the right phrase to bring up the security footage and looked over for May. “Have you seen it yet?”

She walked over to him, shaking her head. “Everything out here was wiped. Did he say how many there were?” 

“Just one. He thought it was me.” Without another word, Bucky clicked play on the security footage. 

They watched silently as a hooded man swept almost silently through the base, killing security cameras as fast as he killed Hydra agents. The carnage lasted less than ten minutes. At the end, the assassin plugged in a device to the computer system and the view shorted out. 

“Why was this system not affected?” May asked, plugging in her own device to copy the hard drive. 

“The system itself is not connected to the one out there. It has a passive tap on the surveillance system, but that’s it. I’m guessing this person didn’t know this room existed.” 

“I think I’m going to have you review all the footage we have on this individual. This is his fourth strike, that we know of. And since you knew the place, that means it was Hydra?” 

Bucky nodded, looking around. “Resupply point with a power tap in case they needed to wipe me. This equipment, it’s similar to what they used in DC.” 

May’s face went a little more tense as she understood his reference to the Chair. “Right. It’s going to R&D so we can dispose of it properly.” She turned slightly, looking around. “Mack, that door, follow it. Johnson! There’s another door behind us, follow it. Clear the rest of the base, see where that exit comes out. Both of you, watch for any self destruct settings.” 

Bucky’s bodyguard turned and followed May’s direction. The smart kid, Daisy went down the other hallway. She wore some sort of brace or wrap around her wrists that Bucky hadn’t seen yet. 

“What else can you tell us about this base?” May asked, pulling the flash drive out of the system. 

“The self destruct was already deactivated.” He spun the video back to the one time their assailant had stopped to pull wires out before the camera was destroyed. “So we don’t have to worry about tripping over it, unless they added something new.” 

Bucky spun through the computers, then grinned. “This is what they were after. Might be upset that they didn’t get it.” His fingers caught for a moment on the edge of a reinforced security box, then caught. He lifted up the box up and flipped it open. A dozen communication chips shined in May’s flashlight, cushioned in foam padding. “Probably how they communicated with each other and whoever they report to now.” 

May snapped her fingers then closed the box up for an evidence tech to take. “This goes directly to Fitz, top priority.” 

Bucky let the footage play again, then shook his head. “That tech was stupid. This is nothing like me. No guns, no bullets. Blades, but not knives. He used swords.” Bucky paused the only clear shot.

May stepped in, nodding. “First proof we have of that, but yeah, he never used any projectiles. It’s all up close, personal.” Bucky stepped back to let her work the footage back and forth. “That’s a katana knock off. Ceremonial swords never look like that. I’m going to look at this closer, once they clean up the footage for me, but that sword is probably special made as well.” 

More techs came flooding into the alcove, so Bucky stepped back into the main room. The bodies were gone now, but Bucky very carefully avoided the blood splatter to go to the spot where the assailant killed the last video camera. 

As the Winter Soldier, he would have stayed there until his fire team came to clear the rest of the building and took him back to his holding spot. So he ignored everything instinct was telling him. If he was the Soldat and wanted to escape again, he would have…

Bucky turned left and ducked under a broken light fixture to look at the exits. The one they and the assailant came through. He labeled that as the front door in his head. One that went down into the garage nearby. There should be two more exits. The alcove had proven to have one when Daisy radioed back about it. So the last one would be…

He ducked down into the last hallway, going past the living quarters and kitchen area. Without thinking, he wrinkled his nose at the protein sludge they had fed him. The Soldat had not cared. Bucky did. 

At the other end of the hall, there were trash bins and laundry facilities. He went through, pushing at the panelling to find the back door. Vaguely, he realized another evidence tech was following him. Bucky nodded at the girl and motioned her to wait before he opened up the door.

A ladder, and a hand cranked lift went up three stories. So Bucky climbed up, and found himself on the street above the base. 

A line of industrial warehouses went on the inside of the road, but the outside looked over the houses between him and the base. The dirt was settled on the side of the road, but he could see tire tracks easily. The get-away vehicle had been here. 

“Our coroner says the victims died between six and eight hours ago. We arrived five hours ago. We were that close,” Daisy said over the intercom. 

Bucky cleared his throat, then clicked the com open. “I found the exit point. Looks like motorbike tracks up here. He probably sat and watched you come in. You would have never seen him.” 

“Great, so now he knows we know,” a new voice said. The man had a very clipped British accent, one that Bucky didn’t recognize yet. 

He stood there, watching as the sun started peeking over the horizon. The Soldat buried inside of him approved of this. Less Hydra was always a good thing for the world. 

Bucky Barnes, however, was a lot more conflicted. And the back of his neck crawled with the thought of eyes on him again. 

—

The case took priority in SecOps since May was nominally in charge of it. Bucky found his email flooded with case updates. Sam was kind enough to show him how to set up filters so at least it was controllable. 

The files that he was sorting through ran deep, and gave him plenty of excuses to ignore email and voicemails. There was one file in particular that he kept coming back to. The photo was familiar, but then, half the white guys in the organization came out of a cookie cutter machine. Another Sam description, but valid. 

Someone knocked on his open door, making him look up to see Wanda smiling at him. “You’re a hard guy to get ahold of,” she said softly. “I want lunch. Come with me?” 

Bucky just grinned and closed down his computer. “Sounds great. You can decipher the menu for me and we can mutter in Sokovian under our breath, like we did in Paris that one time.”

Wanda lit up at that and almost bounced. “Fun! Yes! Let’s go!” She held out her hand, waiting until he stood up and took it. She didn’t quite pull him down the hall, but she also didn’t let go.

She also slid straight into Sokovian with him. “Steve told us that you were helping to find Clint?”

“They want to see if I can think around Shield, since he knows how they hunt,” he admitted. 

Wanda walked with him a few feet, then murmured, “You know Pietro and I think of him as an older brother, moj brat, right?”

“I saw that, in Wakanda. The files remark on your close relationship too. They credit him in bringing you into the fold.” Bucky paused, then chuckled softly. “He’s responsible for both of you and Natasha. And he was fond of Thor from the beginning too. Do you think he’s one of those who’s just good at finding people who fit together?”

Wanda laughed softly. “Then he was not the one who picked Tony and Steve!”

Bucky had to laugh at that too. “They are very lousy at working with each other. Worse than Howard and Steve ever were.” He thought for a second, then decided to go for it. “Tell me your thoughts on Clint?”

Bucky never really thought of himself as psychic, and no one else did either. He was just very perceptive and with Wanda, it was easy to be in tune with her. The air in the hallway, the pressure of the walls, even the faint scent of the perfume she’d used the day before crowded in on him. As she spoke, he could feel the complicated emotions just by the way she changed the physical conditions around herself.

“Clint hated us at first. I did try to mess with his mind, so I can’t blame him. He actually managed to trap Pietro, before he knew we were changing sides. He always played dumb and loved trolling people.” She paused, then said with a burst of amusement and actual laughter. “He never played tricks on the Avengers though. It was like he knew they needed someone to trust more than anything. Clint was always very perceptive.” 

They turned into the cafeteria and paused at the edge to look over the lunch crowd. As always, there were tons of choices to make, and Bucky felt overwhelmed. Wanda squeezed his hand to help steady him.

“After Sokovia, when they said Pietro wasn’t in danger of dying again, Clint took us to his farmhouse to recoup and settle ourselves. It was very peaceful there.”

“He asked me if I wanted to go, if I felt I needed to get away from everything. Called it a bolthole,” Bucky replied to her unasked question.

“You should go. His brother, his wife, their kids, they still live there. Clint would have sent them something to say goodbye. They might have even seen him.” 

Bucky nodded, filing away the surprise at the news of Clint having family carefully. “He sent Natasha all of his bows for safe keeping.”

Wanda’s hand flew to her mouth. Tears were instant and time and space constricted around them. “Clint NEVER left his bows behind. This is bad, Stric, very very bad! Even under Loki, he had his bows!”

Bucky pulled her close for a tight hug, murmuring soft reassurances as she clung to him. He’d known they were close, but this was more than just adopted sibling. Sam had used the word mentor. Maybe he was right.

Across the hall, someone snorted out a rude joke. Wanda stiffened as the download of memory hit him immediately. This close, she had told him, touching someone, she couldn’t help BUT feel what they were. “I’ll go get help,” she whispered.

“May, or Coulson,” he managed, forcing his arms to let her go. She was gone in a swirl of skirts. The random thought that he should take her dancing crossed his mind, even as he forced his legs to move. He walked over to the drink station, directly in front of their table to lock eyes with him.

Anderson. It was him. One of Rumlow’s followers. Bucky could smell the cloying cigarette smoke and the off-brand cologne. That, coupled with the rude comment about staring, completed the ID for him. 

Bucky turned his head and paid attention to his hands. He forced himself to make a complicated cappuccino, the kind that Wanda preferred. But his ears were locked on the table. 

Several people stood up. Some steps went to the trash bins. Covering the exits. More footsteps followed him. Including Anderson’s. Conversation in the hall stuttered, shifted in tone as if others were watching.

“Hey, you’re Barnes, right? They got you on the Ronin case?” 

Bucky turned to look at him. Anderson was his height, left handed. He leaned in a way that suggested he was armed and aware of where his weapon was. 

“Yeah, although I don’t know what good I’ll be.” Bucky tapped his head. “Still sorting shit out. You are?” He held out his hand to shake.

“Myers. I just started this year.” They shook, and it was as bland of a handshake as handshakes could be. “I’ve got a couple case files on it that I’ve been trying to get to linguistics. But you speak Russian, right?”

“Da,” Bucky said lightly before taking a sip of the cappuccino. Far too sweet, just like Wanda. “What kind of files?”

“I’m not exactly sure. They’ve got labels like Желание. Семнадцать. Ржавый.” Anderson/Myers eyes were hard on his, waiting for reaction.

“Interesting choice.” Bucky smirked and took another sip. “Maybe I should look at those files.” He carefully put the cup down to the side, standing up straighter.

Anderson/Myers shifted, his hand dropping to his side in a signal. Bucky was in motion before he even finished it. He punched forward with the heel of his metal hand directly into Anderson’s nose. When the man rocked backwards, Bucky grabbed the throat of his uniform and twisted, making him twist and drop to his knees while Bucky wrapped his flesh arm around the throat in a solid choke hold.

Instantly half the cafeteria had pulled their guns. Bucky held still, staring at the ones that had been sitting with Myers. One was looking at them in horror and backing up, but two were advancing, fingers on the triggers of their weapons. 

A taser went off, but the prongs smacked into the bicep of his metal arm. Bucky rolled his head over to give the owner of the taser a look, pushing all of his opinions of the idiocy into his look. The girl dropped it with a squeaked “sorry!” before dropping to her knees and putting her hands behind her head. Smarter.

“Everyone FREEZE!” Coulson’s voice rang out from the entrance. Wanda and May were beside him. One swing of Wanda’s hand and all the weapons people were pointing were suddenly frozen against the ceiling.

Coulson started walking forward, as casual as if he’d been in a coffee shop. “Miss Maximoff said you wanted to see me?”

“Could you repeat what you said about my authority in the case that I’m handling for you?” Anderson started to struggle, but Bucky only tightened his arm a bit, until the man was wheezing, then eased up just a touch.

“Total autonomy. Full authority to deal with any moles that you found. Even if Hill and I disagree.” Coulson’s voice remained casual and easy, but his eyes were hard on Anderson’s face.

“Good. I knew this one personally. He ran the internal fire team for Rumlow’s strike team. He was there in DC, in the bank.” Bucky twisted Anderson’s head hard, feeling the crunch with no satisfaction. Even as he let the body drop to the floor. Only relief that it was one less face to watch for.

“Understood.” Behind them, May was taking the rest of the team that had sat with Myers/Anderson into custody. “Shall we discuss this back in my office?” Coulson stepped back to let someone tend to the body, letting Bucky follow if he pleased. He did, but first he picked up the cappuccino, cradling it as he walked behind Coulson.

At the door, Coulson paused, then looked up at the guns on the ceiling before glancing at Wanda. “Thank you. If you would though?”

Wanda laughed and brought the weapons down to rest on a table behind May’s security force. Bucky waited a second, then handed her the cup. “Sorry Ljubica. I’m afraid lunch is canceled.”

“It’s okay Bucky. You’ll just owe me dinner tonight. That little bistro you hate.” Wanda took the cup for a sip, watching his face. “This is good though.” 

“Okay. I’ll eat mushrooms and dumplings to make you happy.” He kissed her forehead, something she only took from him.

Wanda looked up at that. “Find Clint. That will make me happy again.” Bucky nodded, then let her go on to wherever she felt she needed to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally home and remembered to add slow burn to the tags, cause oh boy. Clint is the world champion at hide and seek. Maybe galactic champion... Please to bear with me?
> 
> Translations - General Slavic terms, but I chose Serbian as the base for Sokovian. 
> 
> Moj Brat - my brother  
Stric - uncle  
Ljubica - sweetheart


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please to be remembering the CSI levels of gore tag. Not graphic, but it's there.

Bucky held a cloth to his nose as he followed May through the mayhem of the scene. This time it wasn’t another Ronin scene she was having him observe, it was a Hydra vs… someone scene. 

He wasn’t the only one shielding his nose from the smell. Everyone had some sort of scent blocker up to their face. This scene was weeks old, and damn near putrid. Thankfully, it wasn’t a place he was familiar with. He did long for the Asset’s mask though. However, Shield was still freaked out enough about him in their midst. The mask might push them further than he’d liked.

“Absolute bollocks!” a voice inside was saying. Bucky had gotten to know Hunter through Bobbi, and he’d developed an appreciation for his sarcastic and irrelevant attitude. 

“So you’ve said. If there’s nothing else, you can go,” Mack’s deep voice replied. 

“Oh, you are my favorite, really. Such a nice man.” Bucky stifled a laugh at the relief in Hunter’s voice. 

May gave him a quick look of tired annoyance before they turned the last corner and entered the abattoir. 

Bucky paused, gawking, then blurted without thinking, “I haven’t seen this much blood since I worked in a meatpacking plant.” 

“Right, mate, you said it.” Hunter pushed past them, a little pale under his natural English pallor. “It’s all yours, Agent May. We’ve cleared it from any tricks or traps. Now it’s you and the coroners.” 

“Thanks. Go to decontamination and take a shower.” May was reaching for gloves and a face mask as she said that. Bucky thankfully shoved the cloth into his pocket to do the same. 

“Oh thank god,” Hunter said, hurrying down the hall with a couple other people behind him. 

“Well, it’s good to know that he does have a limit somewhere,” Daisy Johnson stepped past them too. “So do I. If I didn’t know this was a gangland shootout, I’d say it was a Ronin hit with this much blood everywhere.” 

“Yeah. I’ve seen worse,” May said, then stepped to the side to let everyone hurry out of the room. 

Bucky didn’t bother to ask about worse. He’d heard that she’d been clean up after Insight Day, as they called it. And he knew exactly how messy he could leave his own scenes. Steve didn’t know, but Bucky had accessed his own record and saw the clean up as well. The body count was one he couldn’t forget. 

The windows through the room were shot out. A makeshift baffle was near one exit. One side had time to try defense, but it hadn’t saved them. The largest concentration of bodies were behind the defense. 

A the crime scene tech was walking May through how they thought it started, so Bucky just fell to wandering around by himself. Like before, May just wanted him to see how the field ops went. So far he’d followed along on six field investigations. One was a Stark wanna be, but working out of a junk yard instead of a high tech lab. Two other times were to investigate the possibility of Chitauri bits and bobs going into the wrong hands. The other three were possible enhanced individuals like himself. Or rather, one like Wanda and two like Daisy. 

What surprised him was how they turned out in the end. The engineer was getting a crash course at the Academy by other engineering majors. The enhanced people were getting a crash course of their own, one of whom Bucky had talked down from the rafters himself. The blood on their hands had been accidental, but it’d been enough. 

Wanda, of all people, recommended them for the medical wing. They’d had just enough empathy to know who was fibbing about their pain levels. Go figure that just about every Shield agent was a masochist just like Steve had been. 

There were no masochists here, just the three of them steadily going through the carnage. It’d been long enough that the maggots and blow flies were in high heaven. As revolting as that was, the human remains had been nearly obliterated. 

“Do you recognize anyone?” May asked quietly, keeping her tone gentle for him. 

Bucky shook his head. “I feel like I probably will once they’re identified? I never came here, so I think this was Hydra on Aim.” 

“Ugh, those guys,” May muttered, turning to bark orders into her comms. 

The other side of the wall wasn’t much better, for all that it was just two bodies. One was still strapped to the chair, although it was missing a limb and most of the face. 

“Yeah, this guy. I think there were just two people left alive at the end. This one and whoever interrogated him. Then the mystery survivor killed any last living on his way out,” the crime geek was saying to May as they joined him. 

“So one got away. Rats,” she murmured. 

“And took all the cell phones. Not a single portable device is left here. Computers, phones, tablets, you name it.” 

“Get Fitz on the meta data then.” 

Bucky had nothing to add to that, but it did give him an idea, once he got back to his office. 

After a long hour in decom. A very long hour. 

—

Fitz was brilliant in his own way. Almost as brilliant as Stark, but still a rank below Shuri. He’d gotten the meta data cracked on the missing devices just by pulling data off the wifi router somehow. Bucky didn’t need to know how he came up with the process, he only needed to borrow it. 

It only took him a few minutes to tap into the wireless settings of the building to thread the Hydra data into it and create a fake wifi hotspot. With the encryption and security layers, only devices that had connected to the node before would recognize it and automatically accept the connection. Once the spoof was complete, Bucky could print out a list of devices and cross reference them with the person carrying them. And thanks to Shuri, he could do all this in a matter of minutes and erase the trace that he’d even been there. 

One person in the building had connected to the real wireless multiple times. And the meta data he pulled showed that they had been in and out of the place just in the past month. Bucky made note, then created a new interview list. 

He’d made it through half the R&D people and all of SecOps already. Other than the one he’d killed in the breakroom, he’d found a few moles and several more rogue agents who’d no longer connected with Hydra. Not quite sleeper agents, but still dormant and waiting. One had spilled everything they knew. Insight Day had destroyed any loyalty they’d once had to the ideology behind Hydra. They’d given enough good data to send out strike teams to clear out several new nests. 

The interviews had served to inform the whole building that he was hunting Hydra in their ranks. One of the disaffected had surrendered the moment they’d seen him. That had been fun, since they gave up data on how the Chair had been updated last. “I thought it was theoretics. I never knew they used it. They gave me specs to design something for the Hulk, not for a human!” 

That conversation stuck with him all through the week. He had ended up in a philosophical debate over Asgardian mead with his housemates over how much different he and Steve were now from average humans. Bucky had decided privately that the differences were too much, and yet in the long run, didn’t matter at all because it was how they thought and acted that counted. 

Which is what led him to the mousy little clerk that ran the hardcopy archive, Cammie Weidakher. She’d been with Shield since they recruited her out of the Smithsonian archives where she’d reorganized their entire database. From what he’d learned, she had settled into the bowels of wherever they moved her archived and guarded it with a dragon’s passion for their hoard. Whether she’d been Hydra and recruited by another Hydra agent, or had turned after was moot. 

What really fascinated Bucky was the papers that the archivist had written on the material in her care. Detailed in the history of the piece, it’s cultural significance beyond the security factor, especially if it was a confiscated book or piece of tech, and created as much of a provenance of it’s history as she could piece together. It made him ponder on what she could tell him of the history of his original arm. No doubt she’d be able to trace that down too. 

Bucky didn’t want to spook her, especially as she hadn’t disappeared once the last kill site was confirmed as a former AID base. So he waited until he came up with something else to talk to her with. 

—

“Mr. Barnes. I wasn’t expecting you to come down here to interview us for a long time.” The girl at the service desk of the archive was young, so young to his eyes. She wore her naturally curly hair up in fluffy little poofs behind each ear and her gray eyes were wide with innocence. The gun at her hip was a comfortable weight for her, not affecting her stance at all though. 

“I’m not interviewing, I came down on a whim. I overheard Coulson saying that you’ve got some of Clint Barton’s stuff on file down here?” He’d chosen a Shield t-shirt with jeans, sleeves folded up to his elbows to give a relaxed look.

“Ohh yes. Heard you were a long range sniper too. Wanna check out the competition, huh?” She grinned and gave him an impudent wink before tapping away at the keyboard. “Most of what we have is just things he shot and bows he no longer uses. A few examples of his trick arrows in case we needed to reverse engineer something. Uhm,” She paused, frowning at the screen for a moment, then her face flowered with excitement. “Oh wow, Archivist Weidakher wrote up provenance on the bows that Clint made himself! She’s available, if you’d like to speak to her?” 

“Yes, that’d be great. I think I read a couple of those.” Bucky pulled up one of his charming smiles from the 40’s and earned a bright grin in return. He’d read Cassandra James’ background file before coming down. There was no way this little intern from the University of Maryland had any chance at being Hydra, not with her record of multiple protest arrests. God help them, she was a brand new Stevie with fully functional lungs. 

“Absolutely. Have a seat!” She pointed behind him to one of the reading tables. He nodded and took a seat with his back to the wall, digging out his phone to look like he was fully integrated in the 21st century. Maybe he was, because Sam had put a little game involving aiming balls at angles to destroy fields of blocks on his phone and Bucky couldn’t stop playing it. It was a harmless way to keep his brain fresh in calculating angles and ricochets, even if they didn’t always work digitally the way they would in real conditions. 

He was halfway through a level when the door opened again and the Archivist came out. Cammie Weidakher wouldn’t have caught anyone’s attention, and Bucky decided that was on purpose. She was a little shorter than Natasha, but without the muscle and sensuality of the Widow. Instead she was built with angles instead of curves, then covered those angles with flat, shapeless clothing. Her dirty blond hair was kept naturally curly but pulled back in a tight bun. Despite her lack of a wimple, she reminded him of Sister Mary Carmichael from his primary school days. He almost shoved his phone away feeling guilty, but wasn’t quite sure why. 

Instead he stood and bowed a bit as she came over to him. “Agent Barnes, Miss James said you were interested in the Barton archival items?” Her words were clear and nearly accent-less, but he caught just a touch of British roundness to her vowels. 

“Yes Ma’am. They asked me to look into his disappearance in case I had any ideas about where he went.” Thankfully, she didn’t offer to shake his hand. That was another thing that was going around about him too. And if she was as smart as he’d decided she was, she knew all the rumors, despite the fact that she rarely left the archive. Chatty assistants like Cassandra would be essential. 

“Ma’am,” she repeated, relaxing enough for a soft chuckle. “You sound like him. He came in with all his pleases and ma’ams too.” She stepped back and gestured towards the door. “I’ve taken the liberty to pull the interesting bits while you waited, but I’d rather keep them back here, if you don’t mind.” 

“Not at all, thank you. I appreciate you speaking to me with no notice. I seem to be rather disruptive for some people.” This time, the smile and look he chose was the one he used to charm the mothers of dates. Apologetic and just a bit awestruck at them as well as their daughters. It’d never worked on Sarah Rogers though.

It did work on Cammie Weidakher. Her posture melted a bit and her shoulders relaxed as she smiled and led him back through the door into a hallway. “That’s a bit of an understatement. Everyone down here is looking forward to their chance to interview with you, you know.” She smiled wider over her shoulder and winked. “Too many history majors who know the whole Captain America story in and out.” 

Bucky forced a laugh. Like Steve, he hated being reminded of where they came from was more historical than geographical these days. “Then maybe I’ll save the most pleasant for last?” 

“Oh, please don’t. They’re driving me nuts every week to see if they’ve been scheduled yet. In here please.” She opened the door to a workshop meant for preservation. Several bows were hanging on the display. A handful of guns, but mostly knives, arrows, targets, and the occasional hand guard completed the collection. 

“Really? More bows? How many does the guy need?” he asked, exasperated as he stepped over to look at them. None of them had been strung, as was proper for preservation. A couple were crude and basic, but he thought he could pick out a procession of improvement from the rudest to the best of the group.

“Agent Barton was never satisfied. When he knew we were keeping discarded bows of his down here, he’d come down several times a year when he designed the next one.” She reached to pick up the one that he’d put as midrange in sophistication. “This is the one he was carrying when AD Coulson brought him in. He was rather fond of this one.” 

Bucky took it carefully when she handed it over. It was lighter than he thought it would be, even for a composite bow. “Light. I didn’t think plastic would work for a composite.”

“Bamboo,” she said simply, reaching over to pop a snap holding the wrap in place to show the core of it. “Only one he ever made with bamboo. Said it gave him nightmares, whatever that means.” 

Bucky chuckled, putting it back on the rack. The knives were good ones, ones he’d used himself. “What’s the significance of the knives?” 

“He’s just as good with throwing knives as he is with bows. These were significant ones.” She tapped one that had been mottled. “This one cut the cooling line on a bomb. Saved half of Austin that day. Barton was our best.” 

Then she turned to open a case he hadn’t seen. Always went directly to the weaponry, a tendency he’d need to break. “These were brought in with that bow, although he’s never used them to our knowledge.” She set the case on the table and snapped it open. Inside were flyers for a traveling carnival, the one he’d read about. Weidakher tutted and put them back in the sleeve they belonged in to reveal two matching swords. 

Bucky’s eyes nearly bugged out. “May I?” 

“Only give me a chance to get out of your way. They’re as sharp as the day we brought them in.” True to her word, she took two steps backwards, her sensible shoes making no sound on the waxed floor. 

Bucky nodded, then carefully picked up the closer sword. It was balanced as perfectly as the knives. He tightened his grip and turned the blade over to inspect it closer, sighting along the very edge of it. She was right, it was sharp and ready for service. “Why did he have them?” 

“I believe the trainer who taught him to shoot had a partner who did sword tricks. Clint may have trained with them as well, I’m not sure. It wasn’t something he was willing to talk about.” 

A flash of memory, one of his own and very fresh this time. _ Sitting in Shuri’s lab, blinking his way out of a violent moment where they’d set one of his code words. “That sucks, multiple people telling you what to do,” Barton said in his memory, voice rasping lower than usual._

_“You know about that?” Bucky had said without thinking, without really expecting an answer. _

_“Had two masters as I was training my skills. They loved telling me opposite things to do, just to see me fuck up.” _

_“You both had shit trainers,” Shuri said. “I promise nothing like that will happen in my lab.” _

“He’d come to look at these too, you know,” Weidakher said as he put the sword back in it’s case. “It was like he was studying them to keep them fresh in his mind. Especially after the thing with Loki.” She wasn’t looking at him now, just jotting something on her clipboard. 

“They told me a little about that,” Bucky said. He reviewed the conversation quickly to see if he misstepped. He never said he knew Clint personally and somehow he thought that made a difference to her. 

“Nothing like what they used on you, of course,” she continued, flipping papers over to reveal her tablet. “They used the scepter. Somehow that’s part of Vision now so that’s not ever going to be used again.” 

“Which is good,” he said, keeping it absent as he turned his back on her. He was confident she wouldn’t use anything that would work on him now. Shuri had been very thorough. 

“It’s almost a shame. I’d really love to know how that worked. As well as what they used for you. Could it be used again, I wonder,” she murmured, slipping a stun wand out from under the table. She was quick, Bucky had to give her that. He still clocked the move a mile away.

Bucky hissed, twisting to grab it with his metal hand and crunch it into so many useless parts. “I hated the stunners the most. They set your nerve endings on fire.” He kept his voice measured, reaching for the clipboard next with his flesh hand and her wrist with his metal. One thought and the fingers locked in place. “If you’re wondering, I already knew.” 

“How?” she said, curiously, just watching him. Her head was cocked and her eyes on his face. 

“Meta data on this tablet. Been tracking it since the crime scene of that AID lab last week. You never leave it behind, for anything.” Two taps and he’d found what he was looking for, a backup set of activation codes, ready to use. “Yeah these? Don’t work either. They were very thorough in my reset.” 

Someone coughed and knocked at the door. A second later, Agent May was pushing it open with a set face. “We’ve secured her office and her quarters. Is that the tablet?” 

“Yeah,” Bucky answered. He tapped again, then paused at a file. “Can you send me a copy of what Fitz finds on this?” 

“Of course,” May answered, reaching to take the tablet and clipboard. “Anything else?” 

“I think I may have a lead on Barton.” 

“Thank god,” Hunter said as he came in with a pair of cuffs for the Archivist. “Still can’t find a decent sniper to work with.” 

“Can it, Hunter,” May said lightly. “I’m more upset that we have to find a new Head of the archives.” 

Bucky shook his head and turned back to the sword case to look at the flyers. Behind a very young and theatrical Clint was a glowering swordsman. It had a name, Jacques Duquesne, the Swordsman of Sing-Con. 

He turned to May, holding up the flyer. “What do you know about this guy? I think these swords were his and Clint got them somehow.” 

May nodded, and actually grinned. Once Hunter had Weidakher out of the room, she stepped in to look at it. “Clint told Coulson that he’d be the one to watch for, if things ever went south. But we haven’t heard from him at all since Barton came to Shield. It’s a dead end, sorry.” 

Bucky nodded again, but he couldn’t let go of a nagging thought that it meant something important.


	4. Chapter 4

Avengers Academy was almost as nice as Shield headquarters. It just had the unfavorable reminder that Stark was behind everything in it. From the land it stood on, the building design, and just about everything in it. But Steve and Sam had drug him along and there wasn’t any specific thing he could back out on. Besides, there were a couple people he wanted to talk to at this little shindig they were throwing. 

An Avengers party was a very laid back thing. Just people milling around talking, sampling the food and drink, and going outside to show off. Right now, Wanda, Vision, and Sam were racing to see who would be the fastest. Bucky had his money on Wanda’s powers, especially as Vision seemed confused by the game. 

“At least they can blow off some team and have a little fun?” Steve murmured, offering Bucky a bottle as he stepped up beside him. His beard was getting thicker, but Bucky was relieved that he at least kept it neatly combed. 

“Something like that, yeah.” Bucky took the bottle to look at it, blinking twice at the incomprehensible name. “Lang. Has to be Lang.” 

Steve laughed, taking a sip. “Guy’s got good taste. I’ll give him that.” His eyes were twinkling a little and his shoulders sat easy and relaxed. Bucky liked that. Between the beard and the relaxation, Bucky could see the pissed off punk he knew from before fading even further away. That made it easier for him, at least. Those old memories were the hardest to deal with. 

He hid his assessment with taking a sip of the beer. It tasted like old wheat with licorice mixed in. Bucky coughed and tried not to spit it out, wiping at his mouth. “Ugh! That’s awful. Fuck you, Rogers!” 

Steve laughed and slapped his shoulder. “Guess your souped up taste buds don’t like interesting things.” The smirk was very familiar and Bucky had a thought that he’d been played. Maybe the punk wasn’t as gone as he thought.

“I do, but now I’m wondering what the hell happened to yours. Sam’s got better taste in beer than that.” Bucky shoved the bottle back at Steve, making a face and looking for anything that could take the awful taste away. 

“Hey hey, wait up, you said I’m better?” Sam was at his elbow, holding out a bottle of his usual. 

Bucky took it thankfully, swigging down half the beer to wash out the licorice. “Damn right, you’re better. What the fuck was that stuff, Rogers?” 

Steve was curled over laughing, unable to say anything. Sam on the other hand, puffed up like his call sign with glee. “That almost makes up for the gut punching you did in Berlin. Almost. Gimme that bottle, what is that?” Sam jerked one of the bottles out of Steve’s hand to read the label. “Oh shit no, this is white boy nonsense. Come on, Barnes, let’s go talk to some sane people.” Together they shoved Steve into a chair, smirking at each other and walking away to the knot of kids nearby. 

“Who won the race?” Bucky pointed out the window. 

“Pietro. Because of course he figured out where the wind currents would get in our path.” 

“Wait, doesn’t that disqualify him if he’s on the ground?” Bucky asked in confusion. 

“Man, you get it. You really get it.” Sam squeezed his shoulder, laughing then turning as they walked up on a knot of women. Two that Bucky knew, Sharon and Bobbi. But the other three were much younger. “Buck, I’d like you to meet Kate Bishop, America Chavez, and Riri Williams. They’re all gonna do us out of a job.” 

“That’d be awesome!” Bucky said, grinning and nodding at each of the kids, then giving Sharon and Bobbi a little wave. Their chat flowed up and drug them in as the girls chattered about their topic of the moment. He was lost instantly, even when Sharon and Sam tried to give him pointers. He gave up and just soaked in the moment. It was nice, people knowing who he was without having to keep his guard up about it. 

The chat broke up almost as quickly as it started. America insisted on Ri Ri trying one of the snacks laid out and drug her over to it. Sharon winked at Sam while Bobbi groaned and went to separate Pietro from harassing one of the techs again. 

That left Bucky with just Kate. And he almost mouthed along with the words when she said, “So you’re the guy looking for Clint, huh?” 

“Guilty. Although I don’t think I’m doing a very good job of it,” he answered truthfully. 

Kate actually smiled at that. “None of us are. Clint is now the world champion at hide and go seek, I guess.” She rolled her drink around in the spiky glass, watching him. “He did send me something for you, though. Asked me to follow up and make sure it got done.” 

“Yeah?” Bucky bit his lip, feeling off kilter that someone else was remembering him. Every time something like this came up, he couldn’t help but get flustered. It reminded him that he was a human again, but it also made him nervous because he’d lost the ability to predict what they wanted from him. “Asset reflexes,” Shuri had called it, when he froze in her lab from contradicting orders. 

Kate snapped him back to the present by saying, “Clint said when you guys were in Wakanda, you’d talked about maybe getting an apartment in his building. Simone’s kinda the super now, but she saved one for you, same floor as Clint’s.” She dug into her purse and pulled out an envelope and handed it to him. “Key, directions, Simone’s number and mine, in case you have questions.” 

“Wow, he remembered to do that? I mean, we talked about the possibility,” Bucky said, ducking his head as he took the envelope. Her fingers had familiar callouses, notched where arrows should go. His hand shook a bit, but he shoved it into a pocket quickly before he dropped it. 

“Yeah, he remembered. You made an impact, Bucky Barnes.” Kate was sipping her drink again, eying him over the rim. 

“So did he.” He ducked his head a little, fingering hair back behind his ear even as a chance memory ghosted over his skin of finally being touched, of being kissed. “Thank you. I appreciate it. Really.” 

“Actually, about his disappearance case,” she said, rolling on past his embarrassment. “Was hoping to get a chance to talk to you about it.” 

He felt the little packet in his pocket again, then looks up at her. “You worked with him a lot, outside of Shield and the Avengers, didn’t you?”

“Yup. Ended up with his dog too. And now, his job.” The twist on her lips coded as wry to him. 

“Not exactly what you were expecting, huh?” he asked, trying to find a way to get comfortable with her. 

“Well, I can’t complain.” Her eyes drifted towards America, but she didn’t really shift otherwise. “It’s a great job. But I want my friend back.” 

“I’ve been getting that a lot. So what’s your theory?” Everyone had a theory about why and where Barton was. 

“I’d say he’s got a grudge to settle. He’s been around, our Clint has. Racked up a lot of enemies. He might’ve decided to solve one.” 

“Anybody you know who’d say for sure?” he asked, watching her smile. 

“If I don’t know, and Natasha doesn’t, then the only other possible person is his brother Barney. But I doubt it. They’ve had a.. Ah… rocky relationship? Yeah, I’d call it rocky.” She winked at him, then patted his elbow. “Go check out the apartment, let Simone if you want it or if she can rent it out. Space in Brooklyn is insane and all.” She paused, then turned to point both index fingers at him. “And if you find that bastard, tell him Lucky misses him.” 

“I will. Thank you, Kate.” He gave her a little nod, then watched her walk over to America and kiss the other girl’s cheek. 

“They’re sweet,” Bobbi murmured at his side. She’d drifted up as Kate had walked away. “Nothing like me and Hunter. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.” 

Bucky laughed, shaking his head. “Yeah, I would never have called that one.” 

“C’mon. We’re gonna tease Steve until he starts doing laps to show us how fast he can run, then sic Pietro on him. It’ll be fun!” He was powerless as she drug him away. But no one let him ask any other questions for the rest of the day. 

—

Bucky finally found the right door to match the note that Kate had given him, and he tried the key. It stuck a bit, but gave with just a nudge. The hinges were well oiled, so there was no noise as the door swung open. The apartment was musty, but empty of any furnishings. Dust lay on the floors and cabinets, undisturbed for a long time. 

It was huge, almost as big as the apartment he shared with Steve. The main room was a combined kitchen/dining/living space, with a staircase that went up to a loft bedroom. The back window had a distant view of a park. And all that space would be his, if he chose. 

So he took a few minutes to wander around, poking in cabinets and closets, thinking where he’d put his security system and how much he could devote to plants near the east facing window. 

The last door he found on the main floor was locked. He frowned and tried the key, but it wouldn’t budge. Probably an oversight, he thought as he pulled out his lock picks. 

He was wrong, of course. Bucky gawked a bit into the dark room, but knew it for Clint’s instantly. Broken arrow shafts were piled up along the wall, and the door itself had a few arrowheads embedded in it. 

Curiosity overrode any hesitation he had. As soon as he determined there wasn’t any security systems active, he wandered in to poke around. 

The apartment was unlike any other facet of Clint that he’d seen so far. The calm, competent and seasoned veteran of Shield had neat and tidy quarters and very little personality overlaid in those quarters. (Natasha had helped him poke around) The quarters at the Avengers Academy had been neat and orderly as well, if obviously lived in by a canine companion. 

This place was a mess. A dog leash was wrapped around a staff. Bowls were stacked together, several of them holding variations of arrowheads and fletchings. Each corner by the window had a much used and abused practice target occupying it. An old, torn T-shirt was tossed over the back of the couch. Bucky paused, then let himself pick it up and take a deep breath. 

It was stale, but it still smelled of Clint. Bucky closed his eyes at the memory of learning how to place Clint in the whole distracting and dismaying array of scents in Wakanda. Unlike the west who insisted on deodorant to deaden everyone’s personal scent, Wakanda recognized that sometimes, humans just smelled. 

“Some sort of bloodhound?” Clint had asked teasingly when Bucky had buried his nose into the archer’s neck. 

“They did that too, yeah,” He had murmured without thinking. Clint had gone silent and thoughtful. At the time, Bucky had just been glad he’d not had to explain Yet Another Awful Thing that Hydra had done. 

Clint had left the week after. And no one had seen him since. 

Bucky shook himself out of the memory and looked around. He did find one thing out of place in the random mess. A closed door under the stairs emitting a soft blue light. 

That lock was a little harder to pick, but he managed. The blue light came from a server stack. Several of them whirred softly, obviously still active and working. Bucky poked around until he found a keyboard and a monitor. It took him a few tries to guess Clint’s password, (Natalia98) but there were no hidden executables hidden under it. 

The report on the screen was an activity monitor. There were a few pings from random places, but quite a few from an IP address in Iowa. Bucky copied it down quickly, thinking he could find it at work. A quick search of the system showed it mainly acted as an intelligence aggregator. He thought, then slipped a basic .txt file into the document folder. If Clint was using this server stack while he was somewhere out there, then he’d be able to see this file too. 

He took his time to decide what to put. He kept it simple, and in Russian. “Lucky misses you. Me too. Block breaker level 268 sucks.” 

Then Bucky locked everything carefully behind him as he left. He’d keep the apartment. Maybe he’d get to have a proper neighbor some day. Maybe he’d figure out what the hell Clint meant when he kept sliding into his dreams and absent thoughts. 

Or maybe the sky would just rain answers on him. 

It didn’t, of course. Just a cold October rain shower. Bucky just absently knocked his knuckles on his metal shoulder three times and headed for the subway. 

—

A soft knock on his door made Bucky jerk awake. His chair squeaked beneath him as it shifted beneath him. He blinked at Agent May who stood at the door, just smiling at him. “I didn’t realize you took your research so seriously.” 

Bucky rubbed at his cheeks, feeling the two day stubble, then ran his fingers through his hair. It was already getting long enough to tuck behind his ears again. “Ahh, sorta. I was going through the Ronin files. I think I can narrow down the next possible hits.” 

May changed instantly, stalking around the desk to look at his computer screen. “Show me. No, wait, can you move this to the war room? We need space.” 

“Ahh, yeah. Uh. Five minutes and coffee?” He asked, looking up at her hopefully. 

“Done. I’m going to go get Hill and Coulson.” May absently patted him on the shoulder as she strode back out of the office. Bucky didn’t watch her go. He was too busy shuffling everything back into order to carry the loose papers and his scribblings with him. 

Hill met him at the door to the war room with a cup of her own blend of coffee. A soft Italian blessing from his childhood slipped out as he reached for it. Three steps and two long swallows put him at the head of the table so he could put his laptop and papers down to concentrate on the rest of the coffee. 

It was only after he finished it that he looked up into three sets of amused eyes. “Sorry, fell asleep. Caffeine doesn’t really work, but if I pretend it does?” He shrugged and started sorting things out. 

“Understood. May said you had a theory on Ronin hits?” Hill said, locking the door behind them to activate the security protocols of the room. 

“Yeah, ah.. give me a second. Uh,” Bucky murmured even as he plugged his laptop into the overhead to put his time line up. “So, he’s been active longer than you thought. At least three years.” 

“Three?” Coulson demanded, moving over to look at the list now hanging above the conference table. 

“Yeah. I was researching the ones we knew about, then I found that police database connection you have. So I put in the parameters and found eleven more. With those, I refined, and found eight more. He’s escalating. And they have footage too. This is from Singapore, last year.” 

Bucky moved the list to the side to play the video. One man with a two handed sword, going down a busy street after fleeing individuals. He wore the same or similar suit from the Hydra base footage from Bucky’s first ride along: Japanese inspired wrap and hood, with a mask and gloves to hide every possible bit of skin. Even the eyes were shaded. 

Coulson and Hill watched, nodding to each other. Hill flicked her hand and the list came back up. “And the colors mean?” 

“Blue for the ones Shield investigated. Including an early hit but you didn’t have this guy singled out yet. Red for local police investigations, yellow for national teams, gray for suspected but I haven’t confirmed yet. And they all have something in common.” 

“Every one of the bosses were named in the Widow dump on Insight Day,” Coulson said for him.

“Not just there,” Bucky added. “Every hit gives him updated information of where these assholes have squirreled themselves away at. Two of these,” and Bucky paused to put three asterisks behind the events. “These two had the lowest kill count. He actually let some of them go. He was after information. That’s why he takes the hard drives, phones, and tablets.” 

“Have you built a personality profile on him yet?” Hill asked, making notes on her own tablet. 

“Uh, no? Because I don’t know what that is. I can guess a bit?” Bucky looked over at May, but she just smiled and nodded. “Something I haven’t had a chance to learn on the job yet. But uh…” 

He pushed through his pile of paper and pulled out the one he had been making notes on when he fell asleep at his desk. “He’s got your skill set. He ah, knows how to move around world wide, how to research and not get caught, how to control crowds and how to disappear.” 

“You think he was one of us?” Hill glanced over to Coulson. Something unspoken was relayed, and Coulson shrugged. His neatly tailored suit barely moved at all. 

“Either ex Shield, or disaffected Hydra who decided a cleansing was in order,” Bucky said, ignoring the subtextual conversation. 

May read over the list again, then looked back at him. “You said you could predict possible hits?” 

“Yeah. I asked Fitz to run me an algorithm last night to sort out people I remembered, people in the Widow Dump, and the ones identified in these hits. It gave me a sense of what type of Hydra heads that Ronin is hunting.” 

“Wait, Ronin?” Coulson asked, frowning and leaning in. “Where did you get that?” 

Bucky blinked, then pointed back randomly towards Fitz’ lair. “That’s the general name on the floor, right? That this guy is like a ronin, a rogue warrior, hunting on his own terms, yeah?” 

Coulson relaxed again, settling back into his seat. Bucky frowned, then narrowed his eyes at his three superiors. “You think you know who this is.” 

Hill went blank. May frowned and glanced at Coulson, who just looked up at the board. Yeah, they knew. 

“We suspect,” Coulson finally said. “Finish your report, and we’ll get to that.” 

“Your suspicions may change the way I’m doing this,” Bucky tried, hoping to get the senior agent to give.

The man was as bland as his grey suit. “Exactly, I want to see your thoughts first, then see how that changes after.” 

“Fine,” Bucky bit out, then turned back to his board, pulling up a new list. “These are the people I can identify as Hydra that either slipped through your fingers after Insight Day, but were in the Dump or in my own memories. And their ranking that I know of in Hydra. The hits that have been made already would have been on this list.” Bucky paused, then flicked to the report of the last scene they’d seen. In particular, the body that had obviously been tortured. 

“This was Anatoly Rostov. The crime scene techs identified him based off dental. He was part of the Winter Soldier program before I was sold off to the American branch. He refined several of the drug protocols in the cryo system over the late eighties.” Bucky had already dealt with the emotions that this death had brought up in him. “He would have been midlevel, but he’d continued to work in the private sector with other Hydra techs, developing space experiments for the new cosmonauts this century.”

“Wait, can we go back to the fact you were sold to the Americans?” Hill said.

A heartbeat later Coulson added, “How many of these stayed in Hydra’s system after the Soviet Union fell?” 

May was studying the crime scene again with this new information, ignoring them for the moment. 

Bucky answered Hill first. “I thought that was in my background report on myself? But yeah. When Pierce started to rise, he bought my rights out and had me transferred. As far as I can tell, that’s when I went from being a precision tool to a brute force to make a message. I remember some, but it only comes out when it’s relevant to whatever I’m looking at.” He turned to Coulson and shrugged. “From what I can tell, there was a lot of infighting after the fall, until Rostov’s direct commander Alianovich took control.”

Bucky highlighted a particular line on the unaccounted people. “Vasily Karpov was in charge of the Soldier program when the other five were made. Zemo killed him in Cleveland before he set Rogers against Stark to try and break the Avengers. I know he had the Red Book. It’s currently in Wakanda. They used it as a reference to erase everything in my head from it. But Karpov did keep track of his former associates and those looked to have been copied in our system by an outside source.” 

All three exploded at that. Bucky fielded their answers as best as he could, but it came down to seeing a set of metadata on the logins that didn’t match any other set of data used by Shield agents or Avenger personnel. 

Finally, he highlighted six names. “These came out of the Rostov connections that I can find. The tech we found in that first site I saw, he confirmed that they’re still active and loosely aligned.” Bucky paused, then looked at them. “Has anyone confirmed that Zemo is still secured?” 

“Yes,” Coulson replied simply. “Ronin is not him.” 

Bucky nodded, then turned back to the names. “We find them, we may be able to catch Ronin in the act.” 

“This is excellent. We hoped, but we weren’t going to push for this from you. Thank you,” Hill said. “Really. This is more than we could ever hope to reference, especially this fast.” 

Bucky relaxed, feeling better about the boundaries he wasn’t sure he’d overstepped in his searches. May nodded from behind Hill, then winked. She was happy too. 

“I still have no idea who this Ronin could be. But you do,” he said simply. And waited. 

Coulson delivered. “It’s possible, that this could be Clint Barton. Right height, moves the same. Definitely has the skill set. He was bloody efficient when I got my hands on him. And we’ve put in two decades of training him to be the best.”

Bucky felt his stomach drop hard. Coulson was right, that did change a lot of things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now things get unpredictable. Not in the story, just in the writer. Working on chapter five, I can see 6 & 7 past that. I'm glad you're enjoying it if you've read this far! Be patient with me!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Character appropriate nightmare in the beginning.

Nimble, knowing fingers slid across his waist, pulling him closer to the warmth his skin craved. For the moment, nothing else existed for him. Not the strange Wakandan incense, or the heat, or even Steve at the moment. Just those fingers, tracing over old scars, and those lips, tracing over his neck. 

Bucky arched up into the body against his, gasping at the feel of finally, finally, being touched again the way he’d craved since he’d walked away from the Potomac river. Clint’s soft chuckle caressed his ear and he turned to demand a kiss. “Easy, Buck. I’ve got you,” Clint promised, then pressed him harder into the bed. 

Bucky groaned, even as someone touched his ankle. “Bucky?” 

Then the dream shifted, and he knew it for a dream. Because Clint would never push him into the Chair. He’d sworn an oath. They had both sworn oaths. Clint wouldn’t.

Someone was tugging at his ankle to force it into the restraint. Bucky yelled and kicked, flailing with everything he had. 

He fell to the floor, on hands and knees. He scrambled, flipping over to press his back against the wall, blinking hard. Clint was gone. The chair was gone.

Instead, he saw Steve picking himself up off the floor, rubbing at his jaw. Even across the room, Bucky could hear the soft pop as he pushed the bone back in joint. “Oh god, Steve, you fucking idiot.” 

“Yeah, yeah I got that,” Steve answered softly, dropping down on the foot of the bed in the middle of the ripped and shredded bedding. “I know better, but I thought it was a little nightmare, not one of the flashback dreams.” 

Bucky thought of the way Dream Clint had been touching him and shuddered. From the look on Steve’s face, he read that as a horror reaction. 

All Bucky could think of was how hard he still was. If Steve had been just a few minutes later… He flushed and ducked his head. “Wasn’t. But you startled me.” 

Steve still rubbed at his jaw. “Yeah. Sam’s right. I don’t learn.” He laughed sourly, and Bucky looked up again. This time he realized that only his low level night lights were on, but Steve was still in uniform. 

“You’re leaving?” He asked. No one had said anything about a mission being on the books.

“Yeah. May be a couple days, might be longer. We’re taking a couple quinjets up out of atmosphere to see if we can triangulate a signal better. Thinking it might be the jet that Banner had after Sokovia.” Another thing to thank Clint for. The quick and dirty history lessons about what all that was, during his recovery in Wakanda. 

“Ah. Yeah. Okay.” Bucky rubbed at his face and looked at the clock. Five AM. “No way I’m going back to sleep. Gimme a couple minutes to get myself sorted, then I’ll join you for breakfast?” His breathing was mostly back to normal. He still didn’t want to be touched, and Steve seemed to get that. 

“Okay. I’m still packing stuff up. Just heard you and.. Yeah.” Even in the soft blue light of the room, he could see the color change across Steve’s cheeks. “I’ll uh, see you in the kitchen.” 

Bucky waited until the door was closed and footsteps had gone down the hall before he reached between his legs and took himself in hand. A quick and dirty orgasm later, the morphed dream was gone and a curious eagerness filled his veins. Clint was Ronin. Clint was his friend. It’d taken Shield years to figure out what he was doing.

He had a suspicion that he might have an inside card to play. And with the house empty, there’d be no one looking over his shoulder for that hidden ace up his sleeve. 

—

“You want to go where?” Melinda May looked at him through the flickering lights coming from a dozen screens. She was taking point on this case now, coordinating all the stake outs. A jet they called “the Bus” was kept at the ready for the moment she thought she needed to go. Bucky’s research had given them enough to find the ones he thought most likely and put them all under surveillance. 

He’d overheard Hill telling Coulson that the stakeouts paid for themselves for all the intel they were getting. That made him feel a little better about what he was going to do. 

“You’ve got all your manpower tracking down and staking out half the known world. I’m pretty sure this bunker has been forgotten, but it probably still has something of value in it. Maybe some of the metals from my original arm, or schematics of how they machined the parts. I could go and clear it on my own and bring back everything. You said I was ready for field work.” 

“Yeah, but I had planned on having you ride with Daisy’s crew before letting you go alone.” She looked down at the report he’d written up for her. Everything he could remember about this particular experimental lab. Sometimes they had kept him in down in Bogota for study. A scrap of Zola’s voice had given him the right thing to say. They’d mined some of the rare metals in the arm there. Occasionally, they’d take him there when they refitted the gears inside from the raw ore, taking it straight from the smelt into his arm as it cooled. 

The one thing he’d left out of the report was that Zola’s favorite tech had taken over the mine and made it a family affair. Bucky didn’t like examining those memories at all. But he knew that Clint would’ve found the right references too. And probably the traces of Chitauri junk that went missing south of the border all the time. Bucky had shuddered at the thought of Zola’s technical genius being combined with those nightmares.

May looked up at him, not blinking. Bucky kept his face as neutral as he could, knowing she was searching for a hint of anything. Finally, she nodded. “Fine. But you check in every stage of the way. You’re going to take one of Fitz’s dwarf drones with you and it’ll be on the entire time you’re in the bunker. Or I’ll yank you and bench you for the rest of the Ronin investigation.” 

“Yes ma’am.” Bucky almost saluted, but they never did that here unless it was in sarcasm. 

“And you’re not going alone. Hunter broke his leg and I need him out of my hair. He’ll pilot for you.” May’s hands flew on a tablet, then someone said something from one of the stake outs and drew her attention away. “You go, check it out and you clear it. Some of our locals will join you to pack it up. Then you get your ass back here. I’m not reporting to Cap when he gets back from his little jaunt on how we lost you.” She spared him a glance, then flicked her fingers over her tablet. “Official orders to you and to Hunter.”

His own tablet beeped and he opened it up. She’d given him three days. “You’re also going to do something for me while you’re down there. Figure out if you can sniff out where that Chitauri crap is going. Or rather, Hunter will. It’s enough to get him into trouble, I know. Oh, and stop by Fitz’s lab. He’s been holding onto something for you.” 

Bucky nodded, and took that as an excuse to escape. Several more agents were filing in and out, doing things he had no idea were part of intelligence work. The Soldier’s idea of intelligence work was holding someone while a superior interrogated them. Even further back than that, the Howlies had been in procurement. Peggy had been the brains who put everything together. As Bucky glanced back at May through the closing door, he rather thought Peggy would have loved her. 

When he got to the labs, he was slightly grateful that the pair called FitzSimmons were gone. Their intensity brought up bad feelings, fingers that crawled up his spine. No matter how much people vouched for them and the other scientists in the lab, and no matter how clean their files were, there was always the person in the back of his head that expected a new experiment to happen. It took more than words to strip away old memories. 

One of the techs saw him look in with confusion. He thought her name was Singhara, but they had started to blend together with all the interviews he’d done. He did know she had been cleared. “You look lost. Are you needing to talk to Fitz or Simmons?” 

“Uh, Fitz. May said he had something set aside for me?” Bucky took a second to focus on his words to keep them steady. But he couldn’t deny the tremors that threatened his back and elbows. His hands were steady by virtue of being folded up against his chest. 

“Oh yes. He’s been waiting for May to clear you for field work. Can’t go around flashing that high tech hand in everyone’s face, can you?” Singhara turned and went to a reinforced storage locker. Bucky couldn’t help but memorize the code as she punched it in lightning quick. She pulled out a slim case and locked the cabinet behind her. “He’s been working on this ever since Hill started talking to your lawyers about coming back to us.” 

She smiled, flicking a thin braid back over her ear before placing the case in front of him. Two clicks and it opened to reveal a slim, silvery object. “We’ve had the face scramblers for ages. May’s had…” Singhara paused, then snorted softly to herself. “It was problematic all around so Fitz worked hard to avoid that complication for you.” She picked it up, revealing a slithery sort of fabric, dull gray in color. It was a little longer than his arm and ended in a parody of a hand. “You wear it over your arm, under your shirt sleeve.” Singhara looked up, then blushed and put the long one back, pulling up a short one instead. “Let’s try this one. It goes up to your elbow. They work just the same so I can show you on this one.” 

Five minutes of instruction later, he got to leave with a new favorite toy. For the first time in seventy five years, his hands matched again. Right down to the finger nails and freckles. The moment he was alone in his office, he whipped his kimoyo beads to take several photographs of both hands, then a more detailed study. He sent one with a teasing message to Shuri. “See? The Americans do have a trick or two of their own.” 

Hunter didn’t give him much time to play with it though. He was knocking at the door, his leg in a complicated brace but with no crutches. “So, I’m told you want a ride to Bogota?” 

—

“So, as far as we can tell, Banner’s quinjet went deeper somewhere in space, and Tony must have followed him.” The voice mail was clear enough that he could hear the resignation in Steve’s voice. “It’s gorgeous up here. Reminds me of the way we thought space would be. You’d love it.” A pause, then he could hear Romanoff’s voice behind him, ragged as if she was sick. “Anyways, just wanted to check in with you. We’ll be back in a day or so. No space bugs, promise.” 

Bucky smiled at the end of the message and tucked his phone into his inner pocket. “Good timing, we’ll be landing soon,” Hunter said, flicking a few switches. He was dressed very casually in baggy shorts and a loose touristy shirt and sunglasses. The cast was very prominent and a crutch was at hand, even though he never used it. Bucky assumed it’d be a prop. “So, we’ll land at the local field office. You smack anyone who might be Hydra. After that, I’ll snoop around town and get us hotel rooms while you and the poor sod of the hour drives you up to your mountain fortress. Sound good?” 

“Well, everything but the Hydra and the poor sod part, yeah.” Bucky shifted, looking over the panel. “Okay, so off the record, May knows I can fly this, right?” 

Hunter laughed. “Yeah, mate. It’s just Bobbi and I annoy her with all our arguing. And you’ve not been officially signed off on the newer jets.” He glanced down at the instrument panel, then grinned back. “I could do that on our way back. Let you fly so I can get some kip in the back.” 

Bucky laughed as Hunter landed the jet without even a bump. “I’ll think about it.” 

As soon as they opened the hatch, the local arm of Shield was waiting for them. Three men and two women, all solemn and absolutely unknown to him. That was a huge relief, even if he’d checked over their records on the flight down. In ten minutes, he was bouncing on a back mountain road in a jeep while Yamile Rojas pointed out the sights. She had a pleasant voice, and was delighted that his Spanish was decent for the local dialect. 

They were about fifteen minutes out when Rojas finally got around to the topic at hand. “You know, I grew up around here. That mine, it’s called the Devil’s Hunger.” She shot him a glance out of the corner of her eye. 

“Appropriate name,” Bucky murmured, then turned to face her directly. “I know what that mine is, and who runs it. That’s why I’m here.” 

She drove for a moment in silence, swerving around slower traffic. “I think it’ll take more than one man to clean out that nest of demons.” Another pause, then she glanced back. “That place, that’s why I joined Shield. But they never took me seriously. Why now?” 

“Now? It’s because I’ve been in that hole too.” He thought against it for a moment, but he felt he was reading her right. Bucky turned over his left hand, slowly deactivating and peeling back the holographic half sleeve to put it away in his backpack. He let her take a good long look at the black vibranium of his hand. “This is not my first arm. And I’m not the man I was then. I saw your reports.” 

This time, Rojas’ eyes narrowed. _“El Hombre sin Alma.”_ The words slipped out almost as if she hadn’t meant to say them. But Bucky nodded, serene in the description. “My father described you, when those _pendejos_ came and took my grandfather and his brother to work in the mines. But he was just a little boy.” 

“The arm isn’t the only thing those _pendejos_ did to me. Now it’s time to reap their rewards of their work, don’t you think?” he asked softly. 

Rojas laughed and nodded, relaxing into the driver’s seat for the first time. “One man. If it’s the right man. Okay. I’ve got your back.” She grinned back at him. “You read my reports?” 

“All of them. In English and Spanish. You were very thorough. I appreciate that.” Bucky didn’t mention that he hadn’t found them until he’d decided on this little side mission. 

Rojas just hummed to herself with a soft smile, her fingers dancing on the wheel. 

She pulled to a stop while they were still out of sight of the bunker and mine. The road was empty, although it was well traveled and wouldn’t stay that way for long. 

It was enough for Bucky. He pulled out his backpack and started arming himself. Three automatics, one on each hip and one tucked into his back holster. Eight knives, tucked away carefully. His favorite little Scorpion, hidden under his coat in easy reach. His last touch was to pull his hair back in a douchey (he thanked Scott for that word) little puff of a pony tail at the back of his head. He wanted them to see his face. He wanted them to know who was coming to call. 

While he prepped, Rojas was monitoring the radio and the road. “Everything seems calm. They don’t seem to know they’re about to have company.” 

“I made sure not to add my side mission into the notes except to your office directly. Everyone else thinks we’re here because of the Chitauri crap they’re importing.” Bucky looked up as he said that, waiting for her reaction. 

She wasn’t surprised. “They’re never satisfied with what they have, are they? Always looking to make things worse.” 

“That’s Hydra for you,” he said. The last touch was pulling the sleeve back on. A tiny voice in the back of his head said he’d ruin it, but he promised that voice he’d try his hardest not to. “They don’t trust the human race to rise to its best features. Only to fall to it’s worst.” 

She flashed him a hungry smile. “Please tell me you’re one of the worst?” 

He nodded, then climbed back into the passenger seat. “On my bad days, yeah. Yeah, I was.” 

—

The first few layers of security were easy to penetrate. The front gate confirmed they had an appointment to inspect the mine. Bucky’s dark hair and brooding face passed for a local as long as he kept his eyes shaded and let Rojas take the lead. The appointment was fake. Something he’d slipped into their computer system with Shuri’s help. 

The first real challenge came when they turned from the mine to go up the road to where the headquarters sat on top of the old bunker. The inner security check point stalled until Bucky leaned across Rojas to say in perfect German, “Listen, if these assholes are going to make me fly to this fucking hole to fix their mess, then they will open the goddamn gate. Or I go back to Berlin. You gonna tell Heiss you turned his tech away at the gate?” 

The kid’s face went white and he waved them through. “What was that?” Rojas murmured, driving sedately up the last section. 

“Johann Heiss. Officially dead but he’s been playing vampire since Hydra kinda crashed and burned thanks to Captain America and the Widow.” 

“And the Falcon. Don’t forget about him,” Rojas said, grinning back again. 

“And that goddamn birdface. You come to the States, I’ll make sure you meet his annoying ass.” Bucky winked at her. “Seriously though, he’s a good guy.” 

“And not bad looking. But don’t tell him that if it gives him an ego.” Rojas parked as they were directed, nodding. 

“Yeah, he’s got a big head. He already knows he’s pretty.” Bucky looked around, sliding out of the SUV. “Just follow my lead, okay?” 

“You got it, _El Frío.”_ Her Shield hat had disappeared back on the road, but now her jacket was gone and a scarf thrown around her shoulders. It hid her shoulder holster nicely. Once this was done, he’d have to commend her to May for quick thinking. 

The guard at the door had already stomped up to meet them before they could get out of the parking lot. “Look, I don’t know what you told that idiot down the road. No visitors. Turn around and go back now.” 

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told him,” Bucky said in English, but with a Berliner accent. “Heiss told me to get my ass on a plane because of his little toys, so here I am.” Bucky pushed past him, shoving a little bit in his hot shot persona. “Let’s get to it so I can get back to civilization, ja?” 

That bluster got him up to the front door. Stronger security, and an old face waited for him there. “You, I remember you. Where’s Heiss and what has he blown up this time?” 

The head of security here happened to be one of his old comrades under Pierce. One of the few women that ever held rank, Abigail Jones was no dummy. One look at his face and she went for her gun. 

He was faster though. One of the little pistols he brought was loaded with Fitz’ little Icer bullets. She went down with a yelp and a jerk. Bucky switched to shoot the guard following them in, then back to the rest of the shift on duty. 

Rojas had beat him to it. One tech was pinned against the wall with her elbow, while the other security guard was sliding down the wall with another Icer bullet to the head. 

“Nice,” he said in admiration, even as he slid around the desk to check the security alarms. Nothing had been tripped yet. Yet. “C’mon, let’s tie them up and dump them in this back room here.” 

“You have a plan from this point? Felt like you were improvising a bit.” She’d already tossed the security tech’s weapon onto the table behind her, then secured him with his own handcuffs.

“Still new to all this being human stuff. It’s a work in progress?” he replied, even as he picked up Jones and the other guard to carry them behind the door.

“I can honestly say, you’re more human than these _cabróns_ on a good day.” She paused, looking at the security system. “You want me to follow in, or keep lockdown and eyes open here.” 

“To be honest, I’d planned to ditch you down on the road. But far be it from me to choose how you get your satisfaction.” Bucky grunted as he tossed them on a bunk bed, then pulled out a length of zipties to secure the rest of the guards. 

“I wanted someone to come clean out this nest of vipers. I’ll have a bird’s eye view with the cameras. They left everything unlocked!” She laughed as she took a seat at the guard’s desk. 

“Got something for you then.” Bucky dug around in his pocket, then pulled out a flash drive he’d prepped. “This has two programs on it. One is a control module that takes over their entire system and taps into every database they’ve got. The second one records all that and copies it to the flash drive and to my computer back at Shield if they have any sort of internet access.” 

Rojas took it from him wordlessly and plugged it in, her hands flying to the keyboard to make sure it loads. “Ohh yeah. I’ve got all the locks and cameras. I’ll track you and keep your path open. Everyone else is now,” she paused, tapping through a few keys, “locked in place. Have fun, _El Frio!_ I wish I had popcorn for this.” 

“Look around. Bet they had something stashed here.” Bucky wanted to tell her to be careful, to call for backup if anything went south. But she’d already gathered all the weapons she could find and was arranging them around herself at her chosen spot. The steel eyed look she gave him told him everything that he needed to know. “This shouldn’t take more than an hour, with your help.” 

Rojas dug out a pair of walkie talkies and tossed him one. “We don’t have your fancy earbud things. I can track you on the cameras, but you gotta tell me where you need doors unlocked, yeah?” 

Bucky saluted her with the device, then turned to go through the door into one of his old nightmares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spanish translations: 
> 
> Pendejo - idiot/asshole  
Cabrón - bastard/asshole  
El Hombre sin alma - soulless man  
El Frío - the cold. 
> 
> I'm not saying Rojas knows he was kept in cryo, but she thinks he's cool.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story continues! Apology at the end of the chapter.

The halls had been painted and updated sometime in the past decade. They weren’t the same ugly shade of beige he had expected, and that was nice. It helped him fix a point in his brain between then, and now. Like Steve being able to laugh at himself instead of puff up and bark like a little dog until he got kicked again. Or doing the “disappointed in you, young man,” look that Clint had described once. 

The radio in his hand crackled to life, reminding him of the now. Another thing to remember. “So I never got floor plans beyond the two levels here. I’m assuming you’ve got something else to go on?” Rojas’ voice was light, but she came through okay. 

“Of course. What’s a villain without a secret lair?” Bucky answered back. The hall ended in a stairwell, but he stopped just short of it to tap at the blank wall. “Have you found the schematics yet? Should be a door here. I’d rather not punch it.” 

“Looking. Give me a moment. Hey, you think they follow a blueprint for secret villain lairs when they build these things?” She answered back. 

“They do prefer to be in the ground. Easier to hide heat signatures,” he said. Belatedly, he remembered he was supposed to be tagging everything with the little drone they’d given him. But it was out in the truck. If he went back, then people would get curious. Instead, he dug his bracelet of Kimoyo beads out of his pocket and hooked one in the collar of his shirt as Okoye had taught him. One whispered command and it beeped to say it was recording. 

“Found it!” A second later, the wall groaned and clicked as the old mechanism came to life. 

“Good job. Keep the schematics up. I don’t think they’ve changed anything since I was here, but it doesn’t hurt to be sure.” Bucky pulled one of his stronger guns out, this one loaded with actual bullets instead of Icer pellets. 

“Roger that. Y’know. If I was a megalomaniac evil villain, I’d do the opposite. Be on every billboard, out in sight, high up in my tower with everyone thinking I’m just a vain airhead,” she started. 

“Oh, you mean Tony Stark?” Bucky grinned to himself as the radio went silent. He continued down the stairs, listening carefully when he got to the next floor. He didn’t think anyone would be here, but he wanted to make sure the Chair had been dismantled as well. Just in case. 

“Oh, fuck you. Yeah, he’s a mad genius already,” Rojas admitted, still laughing. “I didn’t know any of you cabrones had a sense of humor. No activity on this floor, but I’ll still unlock the doors as you get to them.” 

“You must have met Coulson. And yeah, good plan. I don’t know what experimental projects they still have here.” The first door clicked and he pushed it open, listening for a second before flicking a light on. Filing cabinets were lined along each wall, with a reading table in the middle. 

“Some dude named Ward. They tell me he’s dead now. Musta found out he wasn’t the prettiest.” 

Bucky laughed as he went to the next room. “Well, he WAS Hydra, so… yeah.” The chatter continued as he cleared the floor room by room. It was nice. Gave him faint memories of Dum Dum and Jonesie arguing with each other while they cleared a base out. 

“Okay, so next level. Your sneaky schematics show one central room, but there’s been recent construction to break it up a little. And there’s a third basement level but it’s marked mechanical and furnace?” 

Bucky thought and shuddered. The furnace to melt the alloys was hot enough to remember the way it singed his skin. He rubbed his shoulder to push way how it felt to have the molds clamped into his arm to pour them directly during ‘upgrades.’ “Yeah, what I want is on the next level. How’s the view up there?” 

“Quiet so far. Nothing really moving on the cameras, no chatter on their radios. The Devil’s Hunger seems to be closed today for some reason. Some sort of mechanical glitch.” 

Bucky thought on that, then shook his head. “Unless it becomes a problem for us, it’s their problem. There is a private tunnel that goes from here into the mine, but it’s usually locked down when they’re not experimenting.” 

“Every time you mention experiments, I get a little more sick. Can we wrap this up sometime today?” 

Somewhere in the back of his head, a very old and creaky memory asked if he had somewhere important to go. Bucky carefully filed it away to look at again when he wasn’t in the middle of an illicit mission. “Yeah, I think maybe we should. Going down the next level now.” 

The stairs were exactly where he expected them to be. Bucky set his jaw and continued down, leaving the lights in the stairwell off. He could just see the outline of the door below, and the light that escaped at the bottom of it. He took his time to reach it, then stood next to the hinge with his eyes closed, listening. 

Something swept across the cement floor on the other side. Not quite a foot step, but not much more than that. Then silence. 

“Barnes? Something wrong down there?” Rojas said softly. “There aren’t any cameras down there. I can’t see you.” 

He listened for another long minute, then replied. “Thought I heard something. Going in. If you don’t hear from me within five minutes, call Hunter for backup.” 

“Got it. Keep talking to me when you can. I don’t like this. No one else is moving up here.” 

Bucky frowned, then shifted to lead with his left arm before he let himself through the door. The radio went to his belt so he could slip his little Skorpion loose to brace against his left wrist in a shooting stance. “Moving forward,” he reported softly into the radio. “No targets yet.”

The door swung open easily, into an old familiar nightmare. 

The old chamber had been partitioned into two work rooms. On his right, it was still open and he could see different molds and a half built Chair. He itched to unload his gun into it, but held off as it was nowhere near usable. If there had been someone in the room, he just might have, but it was empty and quiet. Other projects covered workstations along the wall, nothing he really recognized. 

That left the door in the middle of the partition. It was cracked open and finally Bucky could hear movement again. A pump hissed and woofed as it worked. He identified it as a respirator. More machines were humming, and he could hear the steady beep of another machine. If that was a heartbeat, then it was slowing down. And he could smell something besides molten steel and dirt. Blood. 

He gave up all pretense of stealth, pushing through the door and dropping to one knee, sweeping left to right in a second to take in the room. 

It was a hospital room. There was only one bed, but two cooling bodies on the floor wore familiar lab coats. 

In the bed, a frail but still defiant Johan Heiss stared at him. The respirator continued to push, but the old man didn’t seem to be breathing. A needle swung in the port of the IV line, changing the color of the saline. If he didn’t blink, Bucky would have sworn he was dead too. The machine beeped, even as Bucky stepped closer. 

The old man started to laugh. Of all the times Bucky had ever seen him during his Asset days, Heiss had been brutal and efficient, but never cruel. “What the..” Bucky started to ask. A soft hiss and the whisper of cloth against cloth sounded behind him. He turned, gun ready, but the view filled him with more dread than before. 

Coulson, leading at least a dozen shield agents in armor. And all of them pointing guns at him. 

“Oh goddamnit, it’s Barnes,” Coulson growled into his intercom. He glared at Bucky, but no one dropped their guns. 

This felt like a definite Steve moment, somehow, Bucky decided. 

—

Bucky sat quietly in the conference room they’d converted into an interrogation room. The whole outpost was alive with Shield personnel, swarming over records and objects. Coulson had looked at him with no more emotion than the Asset had been capable of, before pulling Agent Rojas into a different room to interrogate her. He was left alone, wrists bound with handcuffs, without water or anything else. At least he’d been able to hide his Kimoyo beads up his sleeve first. 

They knew as well as Bucky did that the restraints were just a formality. No one expected them to actually hold him. But he understood the formality and allowed them to direct him to the room and leave the handcuffs attached. The fact that they did not post guards in the room with weapons drawn on him did a lot to ease the crawl up the back of his neck from the Asset’s reaction to post action reports. 

Rojas had looked back at him with both a puzzled and questioning face. Bucky tried to give her a look to say it was okay to tell them everything, but he didn’t get a chance to actually say it. 

The silent treatment was not the punishment it could have been. It gave him time to sort through what he’d seen at the base, to really think on what he’d seen. 

The people in the lab coats, they had been doctors for Heiss. Both were left in pools of their own blood. He hadn’t seen the wounds, but that much blood had to meant cut open, not just shot. He’d seen enough examples over the past few months to compare with decades of memories. 

Heiss had died only minutes after Coulson had come in. He was meant to see that. Meant to see one of his nightmares fade into oblivion. Once he realized that, he started to think back along the other incidents. That they had pertained to him specifically, that fact he had disregarded completely. Most of the rats that had escaped Insight Day and the subsequent hunting had been the smarter ones. It had taken a lot of geniuses to make him what he had been before Pierce had taken control. Knowing that did nothing against the laughter still echoing in his mind.

People that smart that survived in Hydra’s rank and file were usually pretty good at covering their asses and hiding themselves away. 

Bucky stacked his hands in fists and leaned forward to rest his chin on the flesh hand to think. He was still sitting that way when Coulson finally came back in. 

The senior agent put down a glass of water, which Bucky took gratefully. There was no key for the cuffs yet. He didn’t really mind. They’d get there soon enough.

“Any other agent, I would start with dressing them down and yelling,” Coulson started with a calm voice. He was still wearing his field gear, minus the tactical vest. He smelled of gunpowder and sweat. “I don’t really know what works with you. So I’m just going to ask. What were you thinking?” 

Honestly. Bucky liked that, so he decided to respond in kind. “I wanted to get in before Ronin hit. I wanted to see a site first, scope it out, see what would attract him to make it worth hitting. Agent Rojas should have an amazing amount of intelligence for you, from the spyder virus I had her upload into the system.” 

“You knew this would be a target, but you didn’t add it to the list you worked up for us.” Coulson’s voice was measured, almost clinical. No wonder he drove Barton insane until he learned how the agent thought. 

“I knew it was a possible place, depending on whether the Heiss family still controlled it or not. If they didn’t, then it was a scrap mine of no value.” 

“What did they mine here?” 

“Conductive alloy components. Osmium is very versatile, if you have a subject who can withstand it being plated into their nervous system. They make an alloy with Cadmium as it’s got a magnetic element.” Bucky gave Coulson a look there, waiting until the agent nodded acknowledgment that he had been that subject. 

“It was also a maintenance location for my original arm, and it’s replacement in the eighties. I’m sure some of the data that Agent Rojas scraped included schematics on them.” Bucky paused, then cocked his chin a little. “You should promote Rojas. She sent you multiple reports of this place, before and after Insight day, but they were always downgraded in your list of things to follow up on.” 

“Admittedly, we have been rather busy. It got past us. It’s one of the things I’ll be bringing up with the Director when we get back to New York. As for Agent Rojas,” Coulson paused and sighed. “The fact that she followed you up here willingly does not look good for her.” 

“She’d been overlooked and ignored. She wanted this mine cleaned out and I promised her that was my goal.” 

“That will be included in the evaluation. However, you’re correct that we have been neglecting a valuable agent who should have been recognized long before.”

Coulson took another breath, but before he could start, Bucky asked, “What are we doing for the people in this valley?” 

The senior agent looked at him, eyes cold and calculating. The man was frightening in his own right. “Please elaborate on that.” 

“Hydra has owned this valley, abused the people who live here and forced them to work in that mine. Rojas has better numbers than I do, but I think at least a quarter of each generation has disappeared into its belly. What do we do for the victims that have no…” Bucky paused, choosing the right words. “I had Steve and Prince T’Challa’s lawyers and people willing to help rehabilitate me. What do these people have?” 

Coulson’s eyes clouded a little and he actually looked away. “We haven’t discussed that yet.” 

“There’s at least several million hidden away in the manor house, or at least there should be. Johann Heiss was a slippery bastard and believed in liquidity to help disappear when he needed to. It belongs to the people of this valley.” 

“We will take that into consideration. Let’s get back to you.” Irritation had crept into Coulson’s voice and it warmed Bucky that he could get under the agent’s skin. 

“I didn’t expect Ronin to be here. I came to gather intelligence without explaining myself until after. Heiss was finally caught. It would have been me, if Ronin had not. Have you had a chance to analyze what was in the syringe?” 

Coulson leveled a look and named off several of the drugs that had been used to keep Bucky stable in his Asset days. In doses far too strong for a normal human to survive, much less the emaciated shell that Heiss had become. 

“May specifically ordered you to have a dwarf drone recording every step. What happened to it?” Coulson said, his voice back to steady and regular. 

Bucky laughed and shook his head. “Truthfully? I didn’t remember it until I was already inside. Going back to the truck for it would have alerted the outside guards that something wasn’t right. The more suspicious they are of every little thing, the longer they live in Hydra.” 

Coulson looked at him carefully, then signed and waved his hand for Bucky to give him his wrists to unlock the cuffs. “We have Rojas’ report and the internal cameras from the mine for the first two levels. Fitz says you couldn’t have been in the basement for more than two minutes before we hit it.” 

“You came in through the mine entrance,” Bucky said, rubbing at his wrists and leaning back. And didn’t see anyone anyone else in there.” 

“Correct. What other exits do you know of?” Coulson either was on the same path he was, or was getting all the information he could while he had Bucky under his thumb.

“Ventilation?” Bucky leaned forward, rubbing his head, trying to access the memory. “Wouldn’t be surprised if Heiss put in a private elevator or something from the manor.” 

“We’re checking on that now. Given what we suspect about Ronin, do you think he could have made his way out without us knowing?” 

Bucky leveled a look at Coulson. From the way the look was returned, his answer was a foregone conclusion. “Of course. Have you counted the number of agents who exited the site with you?” 

The quirk in the corner of Coulson’s mouth gave him the answer. One extra person. Probably never got their face on camera. “Did he carry gear out?” Bucky asked hopefully.

Now he got the full smile. “Nope. FitzSimmons are eating that place up with a spoon. If he left something, we’ll find it.” 

—

Later, while the geeks tore through the data, Bucky excused himself to the bathroom. In the last stall, he sat down on the toilet and turned his wrist up to pull out his Kimoyo beads. Most of the footage was plain, so he just scrolled through the last. He watched again as Coulson took him into custody, but in the back, over several agents’ shoulders, one stood mostly in the shadows. 

Under the brim of a Shield hat, he could see the clear blue of Clint Barton’s left eye. And he was staring straight at Bucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah.. that's what, five months since the last update on this story? I am so sorry about that. Things happened.. I blew my wrist out (carpal tunnel). Been trying to get it covered under workers' comp cause of the stupid program they use at work etc etc etc.. I've tried alternative ways to write, and they irritate and get in the way of my brain blurting. (tha's my writing process) Anyways.
> 
> I do hereby solemnly promise that this story WILL be finished. Just don't ask for a timely manner. I have so much planned for these two fellas... ;) Just be patient with me?


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> See the notes at the end for the Author Apology. CW: none, really. Other than Bucky being a putz in his own head. Aren't we all?

Shield didn’t have a large enough building to double as barracks anywhere close, so they did the next best thing. Cleared out the closest hotel and paid the owner enough to take it. Bucky had been firmly backed out of the room and sent to his room with supper. He didn’t mind so much, as he’d gotten grilled three times in person by Coulson, once again over the phone by Hill, and received a short worded email from Steve. Actually, the email had been the easiest part. “When you’re ready.” 

When he was ready. To really commit to this as his life? Or how he really felt towards the fact that Clint had decided that a bouquet of dead bad guys worked better than roses?

Well, if it was his intent… it kinda did. At least to Bucky. Maybe Natasha would understand it. Nothing says I love you like nightmares fully dead and gone.

Bucky groaned and rolled onto his back. His hotel room was claustrophobic and warm. Their idea of air conditioning was good construction and fans, and it probably worked for regular humans. But the serum had him uncomfortably warm, just short of actually dripping sweat. Between the heat and all the things racing around his head, there was no way he’d ever be able to fall asleep. 

No one had said that he had to stay in his room. The only actual orders he had were to stand down and get his ass on the team flight tomorrow morning and to not disappear again.

The Asset and the Soldier usually had clear, precise orders, but he’d still figured out little bits of free will. Okay, so those flashes had been more of the ‘take the more skilled shot than the one that got the job done’ sometimes, but even then, he’d made it a tiny fraction of rebellion against his captors. Even under Pierce, he’d had choices in minutiae that were beacons of self will.

He was standing down. He was in the hotel. He was not disappearing. Going to the fucking bar downstairs was still not disappearing. A bucket of fucking beer might help him cool down enough to sleep. Maybe. It’d at least pass the time.

It only took a moment after the decision was made to dress again, slip a gun in his waistband and quietly exit the room. Didn’t matter if it was bugged or not. The hotel WAS Shield for the moment.

Only a few people were in the bar, and they looked like locals to Bucky’s eye. None of them glared exactly, but no one smiled either. He made a bet with himself about which ones had also been told to not disappear either. 

What mattered was the bartender had a smile and it was empty there, so he slid onto a stool. “Forget American beer, I need a bucket of something cool and smooth,” he asked, sliding his own personal card onto the bar to pay.

“Got the thing,” the tender said, stepping over to the tap to pour something that was dark and easy on the foam. “Want anything harder? Got some good whiskies, bourbons, vodka, you name it.”

“Aguardiente? Got some of that?” Bucky asked hopefully. The beer glass slid into his hand and took his first sip, groaning. “Oh, that’s good. Thanks.”

“Yah, we got that.” The tender pulled a bottle out from below and put a shot glass next to it. “Local? You don’t look it.”

“He’s been here a few times,” a voice said behind him. Then Yamile Rojas was sliding onto the stool next to him, a light social smile doing nothing to her dark eyes. “Watch out, that stuff has a kick.”

A second shot glass appeared next to the first, so Bucky poured out two fingers for each of them. “Hoping so. My ears are still ringing from that dress down.”

“I should have just dumped you on the side of the road,” Rojas said with a sour laugh, then took the drink and threw it back.

Bucky did the same, savoring the sting even as he wheezed a little at it. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

Rojas held out her glass for a second shot. Bucky finally realized she was in her version of street clothes. Light colored shorts and a loose shirt that draped from her shoulders down. As he refilled her glass, he arched his eyebrow at her. “Didn’t get you fired, did I?”

“No,” she said thoughtfully, then tossed the shot back. She put the glass upside down onto the bar, shaking her head. “No, but maybe worse. You got me noticed.”

Bucky snorted, savoring his second shot. “All I did was ask why they kept overlooking your reports.” He paused, then shrugged. “Probably got another Hydra agent caught, once they traced that back.”

Yamile thought about that, then shrugged and pursed her mouth. “Can’t say that breaks my heart.”

Bucky chuckled, then waved for a second glass of beer too. “You gonna stick around here?”

“Could. But I think maybe it might not be such a great idea.” She glanced up at the polished chrome bar that ran across the top of the liquor shelf. Like Bucky, she had noticed the discontent of the agents sitting across the room from the bar. “Upset a few buckets.”

“Give May a few days, she’ll probably end up letting you choose where to go next.” 

“Actually, she asked me to go to Headquarters too. Said she could use a fresh eye on some things.” Now she glanced back at his face, relaxing a bit and letting him see the open question in her eyes.

Bucky laughed softly, nodding. “Yeah, I really did get you noticed. May’s good though. Really good.” He didn’t mean her skills, but as a person. “You could do worse than learn from her. Might end up directing the whole division down here if you do.” 

Yamile laughed, shaking her head but relaxing from it. “You do not think small, do you, gringo?”

Bucky laughed and winked at her. “When you’re used to toppling governments of all sizes, why think small?”

Yamile choked on the drink she was taking, then coughed a bit, laughing. “Wasn’t expecting that, El Frio.” 

Bucky waited until she caught her breath, then said softly, “Bucky, please. Just Bucky.” He smiled, tipping his beer at her.

She paused, then nodded. “Bucky. I’ll see you at Headquarters then?” 

“I’ll be on the flight tomorrow,” he replied. Her body language had relaxed, she was much easier in her skin than she had been at first. “If my name isn’t mud right now, I’ll show you around once we get there.”

“You, I might take restaurant recommendations from, yeah.” Yamile grinned, standing up and tapping the bar twice. “The last time I was there, they sent me to Taco fucking Bell. That’s not even real food!”

“Oh, oh no. Yeah, I know much better places, real food included.” Bucky gave her a soft salute. “See you tomorrow?”

“Si, amigo. I’ve got more packing to do.” She waved and turned, striding out of the bar with her head held up and eyes checking everything like a good agent would.

Bucky smiled to himself, digging his card out again to pay for her drinks, then waved for another beer. One more should do the trick, and it wasn’t giving him even a touch of a buzz.

**

His phone beeped just as he started up the stairs. A single text from an unknown number. It took him a minute to place the reference, then he laughed. 

“Have you gotten past level 317 yet?”

Bucky leaned against the wall halfway up the stairs, letting out a soft breath of relief. So his note had been found. He started climbing stairs again, debating how to answer. At the landing of the third floor, he finally replied, “I did. I also ignored physics to do so.”

He waited for an answer for a minute, then continued down the hall to his room. The silence was deafening as he stared at his phone.

The numbers on the door pinged in his head. 317. Just down the hall from his room. He didn’t know if it had been assigned to an agent or not but… He couldn’t let the coincidence go past him. The game comment. The door number. His birthday. 

Bucky tried the door knob with light fingers on his left hand to avoid fingerprints. It gave easily and swung open. It was empty, but the beds had been mussed. A forgotten flyer lay on the dresser. A drawer was slightly cockeyed as if it had been shoved closed in a hurry. The window to the small balcony beyond was open and the thin curtain swayed in the wind. 

He stepped into the room and let the door swing shut behind him. He listened with every fiber, but all he heard was the wisp of the curtain against the wood framework. Bucky let out a soft sigh, and moved silently to the window. Whatever tourist got kicked out of here hadn’t closed it and his security brain couldn’t leave it alone. He’d obsess over it all night if he didn’t see to it.

A shadow lay across the floor of the balcony in the faint light. A darker layer of black over grays. Bucky slowed down to glacier speed, moving the curtain aside as carefully as he could.

In the only shadow recess of the building, he could just make out Clint perched on the railing on his toes, his fingers clinging in a gloved embrace of the plasterwork on the wall. A flash of white teeth said he was recognized as well. He wasn’t wearing the Ronin gear, but it was dark and rumpled in a way that fit the shadows.

“Wasn’t sure you’d catch the door number,” Clint said in a bare whisper.

Bucky rolled his eyes and leaned against the door frame. The balcony door moved silently. It had been greased recently. “Not all of us are absolute dweebs.”

“I know. I didn’t expect to see you today.” Clint didn’t raise his voice at all, but Bucky could feel the humor in it. “How’d you figure it out?”

Bucky smiled slowly. “Learned to be more than just a beat cop?”

Clint laughed softly. “I think your fellow agents think they’re more than just cops.”

“Well we are better armed, true.” Bucky bit his lip, debating how to lure Clint off the railing. He could smell the sweat sticking to Clint’s skin, the spiciness from the taco meat on his breath, the slight chalkiness that would be the dust inside his gloves.

“Are you here to bring me in?” Clint asked, his balance shifting just slightly to the outer edge of the rail.

“I was given the assignment to find you. They only implied what to do when I found you.” Bucky fought to keep his breath steady. He had the fleeting thought that maybe this was what Steve had felt like, in that tiny little apartment in Bucharest. At the time, Bucky had only thought, “Ddisaster.” He really hoped that wasn’t the case this time.

Clint shifted again, a little closer to the drop. “I won’t go back.” 

“Okay.” Bucky said. Not a surprise. “And?”

That made Clint freeze. “And what?”

Bucky wondered if Clint also heard the footsteps in the hall. He chuckled softly, dropping his voice as softly as Clint had been speaking. “You tell me, you’re the one who’s gone all drama queen John Wick on the world.”

Clint let Bucky see him bite his tongue to keep from laughing aloud. “John Wick, really?” 

“Well, the body count is there.” Bucky swallowed a sigh, then forced the question out. “What are you looking for, Clint?”

The shutters came down at that point. Clint hadn’t exactly been wide open, but the lightness dropped out of his eyes. “Bucky, I…”

He didn’t let Clint answer that. He darted forward, catching a fistful of the rough shirt and pressed his lips against Clint’s. He felt the shock go through him, the slight tremble before he was pushed back. “Think on that while you figure it out?”

“Dammit Barnes.” Clint was moving, a second more and he’d be gone.

“Katie Kate says Lucky misses you!” 

The last syllable was spoken to an empty rail. Somewhere below, he heard the whump of hand on railing as Clint cleared the building. Bucky couldn’t see anything, but he knew he was gone. He waited a moment, then pulled back to shut the balcony door and secure it. The hall was empty when he stepped out of the room and stayed empty the rest of the way to his room.

It was still hot. It never cooled and he barely slept. Instead he played the conversation over and over in his head, and the variations and the better things he should have said. He was getting really good at the “coulda shoulda wouldas.”

He gave up at first light and drug himself into the shower. He was greedy and allowed himself a whole twenty minutes to maudle in the lukewarm water. Then he let the Asset take over and clean up after himself, leaving not a trace of being in the room. 

It was the note on the inside of his door that shocked him back on track. 

“Low blow, Barnes.”

Okay then. Bucky allowed himself a smile as he headed down to be collected for their flight out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah so this was last updated in uh.. February, maybe? I was already slow at writing this beast and well.. tail spin of a year, right? Let's all say fuck 2020, survival is the goal. So wear your mask and keep on keeping on. I need ya'll around for when I finally finish this beast, okay? Aight. It will get done... some day. Stupid brain. Why can't I poke you? ugh.


End file.
